Cost $25 at my local travel store. What homemade solutions do I have (i.e., will aluminum foil work?) for less? Thanks.
The chip is located in the back cover of the passport. Bashing the back cover with a hammer a few times will destroy the chip but leave the rest of the passport untouched. Of course this is only for the really paranoid.
And of questionable legality - since you’re intentionally damaging/altering your passport.
I wonder if you wouldn’t be pulled aside for further questioning the first time your passport failed to scan via RFID at an entry point.
I was just about to post the same link.
It left me wondering though, about the problems of getting the said wallet through security checkpoints. It would seem likely to set off a metal detector, and because of the metal foil, likely to trigger a manual inspection if it went through x-ray.
Has anyone tried this?
When going through metal detectors, your pockets are generally emptied.
… and their contents passed through the x-ray machine. Objects that show up as bright, opaque rectangles in the x-ray machine tend to get taken aside and inspected manually.
My question is: has anyone experienced a problem with this?
I’m wondering the same thing, as they seemed like good gift ideas.
There’s also the risk of your passport chugging merrily along the conveyor, with you stuck at the metal detectors, ready for a thief to nab it.
One or two seconds in the microwave will destroy the RFID chip without leaving any visible physical damage.
…
Can other RIFD chips be disabled easily?
What’s the purpose of defeating the chip?
Some mix of paranoia and legitimate fear of identity theft.
Depends on what they’re in. If it’s in a package with other electronics or anything elese sensitive to strong EM fields, then the microwave trick is right out. In most of those cases, the hammer trick is unwise, as well. If you can isolate the RFID chip, however, you can usually disable it fairly easily.
Cite? I recently experimented with various RFID stickers affixed to paper products to address this very issue, and they all burst into flames immediately (well within two seconds).
Pasta, are you sure they were RFID, and not loss prevention stickers? I’m imagining you’re talking about the square stickers with the foil coil in them. Those aren’t RFID, they just trigger the store’s exit sensor…
My microwave is my cite. I think ZenBeam is right; those those large, square EAS tags with a heliform foil pattern on them aren’t RFID. Being a loop of conductor, they are an excellent MW antenna and I have no problem imagining one of them bursting into flames like that.
Basically they are working on the same physical principle (RF resonance). EAS is an extremely limited storage version of RFID (1 bit vs many).