Rethinking RFID
visible and controllable RFID tags

People now routinely carry radio frequency identification (RFID) tags – in passports, driver’s licenses, credit cards, and other identifying cards – from which nearby RFID readers can access privacy-sensitive information. The problem is that people are often unaware of security and privacy risks associated with RFID, likely because the technology remains largely invisible and uncontrollable for the individual. To mitigate this problem, we introduce a collection of novel yet simple and inexpensive tag designs. Our tags provide reader awareness, where people get visual, audible, or tactile feedback as tags come into the range of RFID readers. Our tags also provide information control, where people can allow or disallow access to the information stored on the tag by how they touch, orient, move, press or illuminate the tag.

Researchers

Nicolai Marquardt (PhD)
Alex S. Taylor
Nicolas Villar
Saul Greenberg (Supervisor)

Key Publications

Marquardt, N., Taylor, A., Villar, N. and Greenberg, S. (2010)
Rethinking RFID: Awareness and Control for Interaction with RFID Systems. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - ACM CHI'2010. ACM Press, 10 pages, April. In Press. Earlier version as: Report 2009-944-23. The video figure is also published separately in the CHI Video Showcase, below. 		PDF Paper Video File

Other Publications

Marquardt, N., Taylor, A., Villar, N. and Greenberg, S. (2010)
Visible and Controllable RFID Tags. In Video Showcase, DVD Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - ACM CHI'10. (Atlanta, Georgia), ACM Press, 6 pages, April 10-15. Video and paper, demonstrated live at CHI. See also the companion full paper above published at CHI. 		PDF Paper Video File
Marquardt, N. and Taylor, A. (2009)
RFID Reader Detector and Tilt-Sensitive RFID Tags. In DIY for CHI: Methods, Communities, and Values of Reuse and Customization. (Workshop held at the ACM CHI 2009 Conference, Boston, Mass.), (Buechley, L., Paulos, E., Rosner, D., Williams, A., Ed.), April 5. 		PDF Paper