Data and RFID - A Never Ending Debate
In this time of consumerism data is really valuable. Businesses and companies feel that the more data they have the better it is for them. This actually may not be the truth. This has been proved by America Online. Last week the employees of AOL published on the web the search histories of 6, 58,000 of the company’s Web site users. This is something that created a huge uproar and dissatisfaction. Bloggers had a good look at the data and found that one of the people had made a large number of searches on how to kill your wife. The same person had also made searches on images of decapitation, car crashes and dead people.
According to America Online the decision to provide information on the searches made by the people was to provide data for academics and the decision had not been vetted. The information has been removed from the website, it is still not clear if the company will collect such information in future.
Now assume that this same kind of RFID data has been released, if a company accidentally releases the purchase information of the people along with the serial number. This would lead to raising questions about privacy. There are a number of reasons that support the collection of recording of unique serial numbers of individual items stored. There are equally good numbers of reasons that lead us to believe that such recording should not be done. It is for the companies to see what is good for them and their customers.
It sounds helpful in certain cases to keep such a record. If you buy a DVD player and its serial number is linked to you personally. In case you have a problem with it six months down the line the store can easily determine if the product is in under warranty. Using RFID will reduce the cumbersome work of entering the data at the point of sale to track the warrantee data.
RFID data will also help companies. Suppose a person buys a brown trouser from company X with a serial number 54321 then the person can be prevented from buying the same color of pants two months later and returning the first pair. I see little value addition being made to the companies, if the companies know that I prefer a certain brand or product then how will the serial number of that help the company.
A serious problem is the security of data. Suppose a person has access to such data and with the information regarding the clothes purchased by her finds her suitable to be robbed. Companies would have to careful while storing such information and prevent the leaking of such information.
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