Tiny RFID Tags May Make Jewelry More Secure

Since the PR materials make no mention of retailers or purchasers disabling the tag upon purchase it follows that no such protection was considered or is possible with this particular application. Sales made without full disclosure could prove to be a liability.

If privacy advocates were seriously concerned about being tracked they would press their legislators to do something about the videocameras being pointed at them from every corner of city intersections these days.

Counterfeiting the tag ID wouldn''t at all be out of the question. It''s easy enough to imagine someone intercepting the transmission, then spoofing that unique ID or duplicating it. Consider how many people have had their unique cell phone identifiers spoofed.

I doubt that such a small tag would have much of a read range but as technology advances it wouldn''t be too hard to imagine a reader that displayed signal strength being misused to approximate location of known valuables. Now that''s profit margin, an unscrupulous retailer using the customer database to sell and "retrieve" the same jewelry over and over again.

It's a great idea for security, but what implications could it have on privacy--i.e. does it provide an ability to track the wearer without his or her knowledge after the jewelry is purchased? Inviting dialogue on this topic!