Wireless Identity Theft

"Wireless" Identity Theft is described as "The act of compromising an individual's personally identifying information using wireless (radio frequency) mechanics." (read an article from The University of Massachusetts titled: "Vulnerabilities in First-Generation RFID-enabled Credit Cards" [http://prisms.cs.umass.edu/~kevinfu/papers/RFID-CC-manuscript.pdf] )

This is a relatively new technique of gathering an individual's personal information from RF-enabled cards carried on a person in their access control, credit, debit, or government issued identification cards (see Electronic Freedom Foundation site [http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/RFID/rfid_position_statement.php] ). Each of these cards carry a radio frequency identification chip which responds to certain radio frequencies. When these "tags" come into contact with radio waves, they respond with a slightly altered signal. In their response is encoded personally identifying information such as Name, Address, Social Security Number, Phone number, and pertinent account or employee information.

Upon capturing (or "harvesting") this data, the thief is then able to program their own cards to respond in an identical fashion ("cloning"). Many sites are dedicated to nothing but teaching people how to perform this act, as well as supplying the necessary equipment and software necessary (see: RFIdiot.org [http://rfidiot.org/] and Texas Instruments' RFID site [http://www.ti.com/rfid/] )

As of this writing (May 25th, 2008), Google search results indicated the existence of 13,300 websites dedicated to this practice, up from 8,400 only one month ago. This is indicative of a rapidly spreading wave of information. Further, numerous articles have been written (Wired.com: "The RFID Hacking Underground" [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.05/rfid.html] ) and broadcast television has produced several investigations into this phenomenon (see KPHO-5 PHOENIX [http://www.kpho.com/video/16291478/index.html] and KVUE-24 Austin [http://www.kvue.com/video/index.html?nvid=243913] ).

Currently, efforts are underway to educate the average consumer as to the vagaries of Radio Frequency Identification as the greatest threat to society in current times by companies such as Wisteria House Products [http://www.armadillodollar.com] of Arizona and the Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN) [http://www.nocards.org/] as well as attempting to initiate legislation to limit the use of RFID by companies and governmental agencies.