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If you’re worried about your privacy, RFID is probably not the technology for you. RFID is used for access to secured areas, for employee identification, and many other applications that imply a degree of security. However, RFID tags are generally not secure. Active RFID tags, tags that have a battery in them to boost the signal, can often be read from a hundred meters away. On top of this, the unique signature of an RFID tag is very possible to copy.
Currently, RFID tags are included in numerous forms of identification. You don’t get a choice about the RFID tag in your passport or your driver’s license. Increasingly, RFID inventory tracking systems are used for every object of even moderate value. As tracking technology gets better, we may be approaching the day when you walk into Walmart and the anti-theft RFID readers take note of the fact that you’re wearing pants you bought at Target, a purse from Shopco, and shoes from Payless.
Advertising companies have been tracking private information from consumers for decades, but RFID tracking has the potential to create a whole new level of access for them. Enormous databases of consumer information, gathered from surveys, purchased from data vendors, and so on, create elaborate profiles. Pepsi can tell you what kind of shoes and music Pepsi drinkers prefer, and that’s true of every major brand in the marketplace. What they can’t tell you, now with current technology, is that you bought that shirt but never wore it because the fit wasn’t quite right, and how many trips to Haggen Das you’ve been making in the interm. It would take a great deal of data centralization to make that kind of detailed, time stamped tracking possible, but the drive is there; we can see the drive from the massive amount of consumer data that has already been collected and organized.
