From SCDigest's OnTarget e-Magazine
- Oct. 31, 2013 -
RFID News Round-Up for Week of Oct. 28, 2013
RFID Identity Theft a Growing Issue; RFID Market Keeps Growing Fast but Governments are Big Buyers; Saks Gets Near Perfect Display Compliance
SCDigest Editorial Staff
Below are the top RFID-related that caught our eye over the past week.
Identity Theft a Growing Issue for RFID Credit Cards, Driver's Licenses
We've reported on it before, but there is growing concern that credit cards, state IDs and perhaps other items that have RFID chips embedded in them are an easy mark for identity theft.
SCDigest Says: |
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Voice provides a solution that offers the best of those traditional alternatives. Pickers have their hands free, and can rapidly put cases on the belt, counting off the number of cartons to the WMS as they do so.
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What Do You Say?
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Have such an item in your wallet? A thief with an RFID reader simply needs to get a foot or so away from you, and zap, all your personal information in the chip is quickly and silently read.
A newspaper in Tampa is the latest to report on the threat, which local police validate is a growing concern.
"RFID came on the scene a couple of years ago and it's really been great for the fraudsters," Pinellas County Sheriff's Detective Korey Diener told the paper. "If you have someone with a reader, they can walk past you at the mall or a sporting event, and they can obtain all of your information out of your wallet. It'll give them expiration date, card number, your name and obviously they're on their way."
"It's really about educating people because information is worth a fortune. Information is just invaluable," Diener added. "You can use it on the Internet, overseas and you can use it to obtain (fake) identities. It's just the hottest thing that's been going on for the last five years."
With the growing popularity of credit cards and state ID having such chips, the risk is increasing dramatically, and most consumers do not understand their vulnerability to having that data secretly captured.
There are a few companies out there that sell inexpensive sleeves that will prevent anyone from reading a card in someone's wallet, but simply wrapping cards in aluminum foil will also do the trick.
RFID Market to Keep Growing, but Governments Still Driving the Train
The researchers at IDTechEx have released their latest report on the size and growth of the global RFID market, saying that it will reach $7.88 billion this year, up from $6.98 billion in 2012, and rising to $23.4 billion in 2020.
Those numbers include sales of tags, readers and software/services for RFID cards, labels, fobs and all other form factors for both passive and active RFID.
However, governments worldwide are driving most of the action, a summary of the report says.
"Governments have driven most RFID orders as they improve efficiency (transit systems), safety (passport tagging) and protect industries (animal tagging)," IDTechEx notes.
That said, supply chain applications are growing in some areas, especially in item-level apparel tracking. Macy's in the US and Marks & Spencer in the UK are two retailers leading the way here.
In total, IDTechEx find that 5.9 billion RFID tags (both passive and active) will be sold in 2013 versus 4.8 billion in 2012. It says that apparel tagging will take a significant percentage of that total, consuming some 2.25 billion RFID labels (passive) in 2013. That figure sounds a little high to us, but they are the researchers in this area.
(RFID and AIDC Story Continued Below)
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