I heard recently about thieves who were using handheld RFID scanners to determine the contents of tractor trailer trucks to see which ones would be worth breaking into.
Such a double-edged sword can be these devices which offer so much convenience for retailers to maintain their inventory.
One of the practices that keep shoppers safe, especially at Christmas when the buying frenzy is at its peak, is to keep purchases out of sight. The trunk of your car is usually good for this. It’s pretty risky to break into a car, especially if a thief doesn’t know that he’ll be rewarded for his efforts.
But picture someone walking through the mall parking lot, a small scanner in hand (or up sleeve) surreptitiously reading the RFID tags for everything within each vehicle. Heck, with the right technology, I’m sure you can do this from within a moving car so one can pretend they are simply slowly looking for a parking spot. Then, once recorded and evaluated against increasingly available RFID tag databases, all the thief needs to do is go directly to the vehicle(s) in question and surgically extract the items of value.
I suppose the next step will be the “Shopper’s Package” that will be offered on vehicles much like you can get a “Sports Package” today. This “Shopper’s Package” will have some kind of stealthing or interference technology that will prevent exactly the scenario above.
There is never a shortage of possibilities…
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Posted under Opinions, Tech Stuff
This post was written by Marc
on January 8, 2008 at 8:02 am
