parallel thought of the day: rfid vs internet search

You use Google as your search engine, and you do searches for all sorts of stuff from your home connection with a predictable IP address. The resultant data kept by Google will likely eventually be sanitized with a unique identifier that won’t be tied to you. But as we’ve seen in the past, we can analyze all the searches I’ve done with that unique identifier and create a very real profile of me. Most likely you’ll find my habits, purchasing trends, most likely where I live thereabouts, and so on.

With RFID still being talked about, can you still have a problem with encrypted RFID tags or passports and such? Sure. While I might walk around with my RFID-enabled passport, various stores I shop at won’t be able to decrypt my passport information, but what if they could detect and copy it? They can track me without really knowing me. Get a wide enough subset of data by someone/something that can get long-range detection, and you can easily see where I work (I spend 8 daytime hours there), where I live (I spent 14 evening hours there), where I can to lunch, and my favored shops…

I wonder when cell phone tracking will become a marketing data set? It’s on me all the time and it is on. You can see every place I go by tracking it…again, even if you don’t know me.

Without knowing me, you can still know me…and given the ease of reading RFID devices and/or cloning of them… Hrmm…I bet in ten years I could get a Harry Potter-esque clock that lets me know when my kids are within proximity of my house and pop their portrait out when they’re home.