RFID Tags essays

RFID Tags essays We all buy and shop in retail stores everyday and do not think anything of it. Know imagine walking into your favorite or local retail store and within seconds, a retail staff member offers you your favorite types of products from clothing to toothpaste. Not only does the staff member offer you your favorite types of products, but also your preferences. For instance, they offer you Scope mouthwash over Colgate because that is what you prefer. In addition, they know your pants size and style, that you buy a new tube of hemorrhoid cream every three months or so, which stores you usually shop in, your credit rating, and the number of miles currently on all four tires of your vehicle; and that is just the beginning (about.com, 2004). A sound like fiction right, but the reality is that there is a technology out there tracking consumers through the clothes and shoes they wear, and other products that we buy without us even knowing about it. The source of all that information lies within a new tracking technology known as RFID, which stands for radio frequency identification, which involves tags and readers (Kantor, 2003). RFID tags are microchips that range in size from as large as a grain of sand to as small as a speck of dust (about.com, 2004). Something this small would be hard to spot and can be placed on everything without the consumers knowledge, even in food products bought at the local grocery store (about.com, 2004). RFID tags are not to be confused with security tags or barcodes because they cannot identify products and detect them at long distances (about.com, 2004). RFID tags can work at close range levels, while others work at long-range levels. What this means is that a product can be traced at a distance 5-miles from the store or 20-miles or more from the store. How are these tags traced? They are traced by using an RFID reader that picks up signals coming from a products RFID tag. When an RFID tag gets...