RFID and privacy: what consumers really want and fear

This article investigates the conflicting area of user benefits arising through item level radio frequency identification (RFID) tagging and a desire for privacy. It distinguishes between three approaches feasible to address consumer privacy concerns. One is to kill RFID tags at store exits. The second is to lock tags and have user unlock them if they want to initiate reader communication (user model). The third is to let the network access users’ RFID tags while adhering to a privacy protocol (network model). The perception and reactions of future users to these three privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) are compared in the present article and an attempt is made to understand the reasoning behind their preferences. The main conclusion is that users do not trust complex PETs as they are envisioned today. Instead, they prefer to kill RFID chips at store exits even if they appreciate after sales services. Enhancing trust through security and privacy ‘visibility’ as well as PET simplicity may be the road to take for PET engineers in UbiComp.