Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) is a wireless technology that uses radio waves to read and capture information stored on a tag. A RFID reader can read the tag from upto several feet away. However unlike barcode, it does not need to be within direct line-of-sight of the reader to be scanned. There are two different type of tags: one is passive tag which collects energy from a nearby RFID reader 's radio waves; and another one is active tag that has a battery and may operate at longer distance than the passive tags. RFID tags can be attached to mostly any physical object like clothes, cars, cash, etc. Even, it can be implanted in pets as well as humans (Kabachinski, 2005).
A human microchip implant …show more content…
RFID Implants and RFID tags in consumer items has raised ethical issue for privacy of people and their information. A person with RFID chip under his skin could be tracked wherever he is, and his information could be gathered by a RFID reader at certain frequencies. A chip used for medical purposes contains person’s personal information like name, address, etc. as well as his medical information that is excessively private for anyone. Once a malicious person knows that a person living in a particular house has RFID chip implanted, he can scan the house from nearby distance to check if a person is present in the house or not. This would give an invader an opportunity to break in. RFID chips are also used for tracking pets by implanting it in them. The RFID chip contains the information that would help a pet be returned to its owner. However, the information about the pet-owner could be used to assist in identity theft or …show more content…
The beneficial features of RFID come at the cost of a lack of security. A primary RFID security concern is the unlawful tracking of RFID tags. They are insecure since anyone with a tuned reader can retrieve the information stored on them. As earlier mentioned, tags are very small, so it would be possible that a consumer do not even know it is there. Furthermore, the reading range is expected to increase from its existing shorter distance. Besides the information stored on it, RFID also stores a serial number ‘electronic product code (EPC)’ which uniquely identifies a specific item (Cochran, Tatikonda, & Magid,