Help! RFID tags stole my life.

RFID tags are becoming ubiquitous, creeping steadily into your passport, your credit card, your concert tickets, your car key, your oystercard, you supermarket loyalty card, your airport luggage tags, your toaster and maybe even your new-born baby. They're there timing your marathon, keeping check on who's nicking Mach 3 razorblades and in 'smart' fridges telling you when you've run out of peanut butter.

Here's my top ten particularly wierd uses:

1. On a leg of lamb to report on the last 24 hours of temperature readings, checking it's not been sitting out in the warm.
2. Surgically-implanted into a cat, meaning only your kitty comes in through your catflap. Found here.
3. Inside a golf ball, helping out rubbish golfers find their balls the world over.
4. On casino chips, helping casino owners analyse betting behaviour.
5. Implanted in your oesophegus to monitor reflux. Found here.
6. Implanted in your arm, as a bicep Oystercard which swipes you into VIP lounges and allows you to pay for your drinks. Happened at Barcelona club, Baja Beach Club.
7. On 'smart' loos, to turn off the water if they look like overflowing.
8. On corpses after Hurricane Katrina.
9. In pans, co-ordinating with a recipe card, so you don't burn your next fry-up.
10. On bee hives, to prevent honey lovers tea-leafing them.


Luckily you can get a personal RFID firewall to prevent some little tyke/ an MI5 agent from scanning your tags and discovering you're a secret Elton John fan, a heavy gambler with a propensity for stealing casino chips, still haven't returned that copy of Saramago's Blindness to Bow Road Ideas Store, are £2700 overdrawn, drive an Alfa 147, walked down aisle 14 three times before buying a packet of baked beans and a loaf of granary bread this afternoon, had 3 espresso martinis last night before taking the DLR back to Limehouse and you're in a wheelchair that's the property of Stepney Hospital.

So if you want to rid an RFID tag from your life, best way is to put it in the microwave for 5 seconds. Though it might also kill whatever it's attached to so best not do it to your kitty. Found here.