Are consumers being "stalked" by RFID tags?

• Position: Radio frequency identification - Your Life

Putting special electronic inventory tracking lags on individual retail items could be a threat to consumer privacy, according to a pair of information security specialists at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind. Several of the world's largest retailers have been using radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to track pallets of merchandise through their supply systems. Many now are examining the cost-saving efficiency measure of placing the lags on individual items on the floor.

Privacy advocates say they easily can be utilized to track customer movement through a store and even monitor what consumer products are in a person's home. A Purdue professor who advises the White House and Pentagon on national security issues related to cybercrime and abuse says a relatively inexpensive device can read some tags up to hundreds of feet away. Eugene H. Spafford, director of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS), indicates that if the tags are not removed or permanent disabled at the time of the sale, they potentially can be read by someone in the store parking lot, from a passing car, or from the street in front of a customer's home.

"Someone interested in what you are doing--to snoop, to market you, or to use that knowledge for gain--might be very interested in detecting what you buy without the risk of being noticed watching you at the store," he notes.

Spafford relates that, as...