Personal RFID Firewall

Radio Frequency Identification Devices (RFID) and your privacy

RFID are those small tags you find inside CD cases, consumer product boxes, and other places. The ones you don't see are those that are extremely small and thin - smaller than a grain of rice, flat as a sheet of paper. RFID is in your passport, your company identification badge, concert tickets...and you don't know what personal data is stored there. And it can be quite a bit of data too. The problem? I can pass by you in a crowd and, without you knowing it, read the information on every tag you carry. The security on RFID tags is poor to non-existent.

ArsTechnica.com writes,

"Much of the information on these chips can be read without exotic equipment, assuming an attacker can get within several feet with a concealed RFID reader. Unfortunately, most tags give users no control over when they respond to queries, and they offer no notification, which means that sensitive data could be at risk in public places."

The RFID Guardian is essentially a firewall that can prevent or allow RFID queries, and can do so on a per-tag basis. It a personal, portable firewall that insulates you from RFID information theft. It is complex and still in development, but gives you the common firewall tools* you need to manage your own RFID security.



* I understand that "common firewall tools" means nothing to the average person and probably only a bit more to the technoscenti. That is a topic for another post!