If you think credit card theft can’t get any scarier than having all your financial information read illegally via radio frequency identification (RFID) embedded in your card, think again. SFU business professor Leyland Pitt predicts potential credit card theft via a wave of your hand holding an RFID-embedded credit card in front of a bank reader will become a minor nightmare.

“To me the far more interesting aspect of RFID chips is that they already are, and will increasingly be, in just about everything we buy,” says Pitt.

“This is being referred to as the ‘Internet of things’. The privacy aspects of that will be amusing, interesting and downright scary. If a can of coke is embedded with an RFID chip, and you purchase it using your credit card, the discarded package is forever tied to you. If you dispose of it carelessly, you could be charged with littering, and there would be sufficient proof.

“A far more intriguing scenario is if you discarded it at a site where a murder was later committed — you would almost certainly be questioned whether you were implicated or not. A spouse could subpoena the RFID record of a straying partner in the case of a divorce settlement — to be able to show where the offending party was at a certain time.” 

Leyland Pitt, 778.782.7712, lpitt@sfu.ca