RFID Convenience

Radio Frequency Identification is an automatic identification technology. It works very quickly at identifying data, products or even people. It will most likely be the way of the future. We will be seeing it more and more at places like retail stores, grocery stores, border crossings, etc. Imagine placing groceries bags in your cart and filling up those bags as you walk through the groceries store, then walking through a portal that scans all your purchases at once, calculates your total and approves your credit card in less than a minute. Finally, we will have no more wasted time at the checkout counter. Does it sound too good to be true? Check out this video below.

It does sound appealing but take it a step further…people implanted with RFID tags, you’d never need to carry your drivers licence, birth certificate, passport, social insurance card, credit card, air miles card, security cards, etc again. In one scan, the retailer could know everything about you; with a poor credit rating, they might not even let you into their store or denied access because you do not make enough money to shop there. As scary as it sounds, it may very well be the way of the future, right or wrong.

Personally, I cannot see people volunteering for this ultimate invasion of privacy, with out being able to control who or what information is accessed. Maybe I am being paranoid but with GPS you could be tracked anywhere in the world, seems like a big price tag for convenience. Bottom-line, love it or hate it, it is coming.