There are cheap and easy ways to shield the chip. See the 3 easy steps for protecting your passport with aluminum foil at http://epic.org/privacy/rfid/
Or you can buy shields at places like REI, Amazon or travel-supply shops. Passport shields run about $5; shields for credit cards are cheaper.
For more information, see:
- Researchers See Privacy Pitfalls in No-Swipe Credit Cards - by the NY Times
- RFID-enabled credit card theft - on CNet, which I consider a reliable source; a good article with an awful layout; I copied the text into a Word file that I uploaded to GoogleDrive.
- Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Systems - by EPIC, a well regarded organization whose privacy enewsletter I was already subscribing to
- House of cards: Why your accounts are vulnerable to thieves - by Consumer Reports
- A Threat Analysis of RFID Passports by ACM, the Association for Computing Machine, the "world’s largest educational and scientific computing society"; I used to belong, and I trust their information: The long article says in part: "Six pieces of information can be stolen from the RFID chip on a U.S. passport: your name, nationality, gender, date of birth, place of birth, and a digitized photograph.1 Numerous problems of identity theft could arise from someone taking that information, but this article focuses on the financial risk."
- What is RFID? by the RFID Journal, which I've never heard of but has a nice summary about the technology.
Lots more info on the Web, including on Wikipedia.
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