7 Reasons Why RFID Guardian, the “RFID firewall”, is Not Enough to Protect Your Privacy
May 7th, 2007
(+) Click for full imageAn EPC label (RFID tag) on a computer box at Wal-Mart. You can see the outline of the antenna and centered chip that are on the back side of the label.
RFID technologies threaten to undermine your privacy by leaking who you are, where you are, what you have, and other personal information. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could carry a device that put you back in the driver’s seat? Ars Technica has published an article about RFID Guardian, a prototype “firewall” for RFID tags that proposes to give you such control. Basically it acts as a selective radio signal jammer—it monitors nearby RFID tags and readers, determining in real time which transactions to allow and which to jam. You get to specify which readers have access to which tags.
This sounds like a neat bit of equipment, and I’m grateful for the efforts of Melanie Rieback and the RFID Guardian Project team. I hope we’ll eventually see something like this on the market. Even so, RFID Guardian strikes me as rather flimsy protection that should only be used as the last resort in a multi-layer defense.