[LINK] RFID again: Your Garbage Can Could Be Spying On You
Kim Holburn
kim at holburn.net
Sat Sep 2 22:17:15 AEST 2006
More media articles about RFID in wheely bin paranoia:
http://www.livescience.com/scienceoffiction/060831_technovelgy.html
> Garbage cans all over England are under surveillance tonight. And
> not by sleepy, fallible humans. At least 500,000 "wheelie bins" now
> use technology worthy of James Bond's fabled electronics genius
> "M" (or at least a competent villain from SPECTRE).
>
> Electronic devices (passive RFID tags) about the size of a one-
> pence piece are screwed into a hole in the lip of the bin. As the
> bin is hoisted up for emptying, an RFID reader on the refuse truck
> interrogates the chip, which divulges a serial number identifying
> the property owner. The weight of the bin is recorded by the
> truck's sensors and is registered in a database entry along with
> the serial number.
>
> The database entries for the day are downloaded at the dump (now,
> that's a data dump!) and stored in a vast central databank of
> property owner behavior. I can smell a new "garbage tax" on people
> with overly-heavy cans—how about you?
>
> Although this is frankly a story that is difficult to take
> seriously, please note the following. You should remember that many
> of the articles you buy (and sooner or later throw away) are now
> also equipped with passive RFID tags that detail the item's brand
> name and product name. If it's possible to scan the tag on the
> trash can with an ID, it's possible to use similar equipment to
> quickly scan your can to uncover your purchasing habits.
I like the previous paragraph, as I said before: "Garbage truck warns
you you are running out of weetbix."
> Contactless credit cards using tiny RFID chips are now being widely
> tested for use as credit cards and other applications. You can cut
> up the number portion of a credit card to discourage thieves when
> you toss it in the trash. But what if you don't cut the tiny chip
> in the credit card? All of the old information in the card is
> available (encrypted, but still available).
Ouch, didn't think of that. Can we run an old new credit card
through a degausser to kill it? Or do we need a taser?
Discussion on Slashdot too:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/02/0638243&from=rss
Kim
--
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
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