RFID chips are super cool because those little buggers can beam things wirelessly. The guys at Mythbusters totally thought so too and wanted to make an episode about how trackable and hackable RFID chips were. Sounds amazing! Everyone would’ve learned more about the technology that’s invisibly invading our lives. But, nope. Credit card companies banned ‘em.
Specifically, it looks like the lawyers of Visa, American Express, Discover and all the other bigwig debt slurpin’ credit card companies got in immediate contact with Discovery (the network that airs Mythbusters) and told them if Savage and crew did the episode, the credit card companies would pull its advertisements and commercials from Discovery. Discovery caved and the RFID episode was axed. Bummer. [Disinfo via @bxchen]
scainburger
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 10:23 AM“…the RFID episode was axes” –> “axed”?
Sicarius123
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 10:45 AMIt’s also “invisibly invading our lines”. :)
Logan Booker
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 10:52 AMThanks for spotting those errors. Pushed it through while I was in the middle of writing a story and it didn’t get the attention it needed. Fixed now.
Chris M
Monday, February 6, 2012 at 12:43 AMThis comment has been deemed inappropriate and has been deleted.
Dan Miller
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 10:28 AMI bet you it will show up as a torrent soon enough.
Titsnass
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 1:28 PMHuh??
wsDK_II
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 6:46 PMi hope so
olearymo
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 12:02 PMI don’t think it was actually made, dude.
Sarah
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 10:45 AMMaybe those people carrying around rfid shielded wallets are doing the right thing. I understand not wanting to shatter consumer confidence in a technology but that there is something they don’t want us to know is enough to make me cautious
Disco_box
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 11:00 AMAgreed. Something is fishy…
Lord Crumplebottom
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 11:05 AMSo instead of working with the Mythbusters crew on ways to make them more secure they instead decided to release the hounds.
Yep, sounds about right for VISA/AMEX/et al
Titsnass
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 1:30 PMI don’t know what it is they think they’re hiding, the issues with RFID privacy are well known. Oh, wait… they don’t want you to know how much it will effect your privacy!
Rob
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 1:50 PMA quick google on this shows that this happened back in 2 Sept 2008…
Is Gizmodo really 3.5 years behind the ball?
Greg
Monday, February 6, 2012 at 9:33 AMThat would have been the exploding RFID chip episode?
Steve
Monday, February 6, 2012 at 1:54 PMactually they reported on it back then too,
I remember reading the article.
What is is with giz and regurgitation?
Dennison
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 2:13 PMI love Mythbusters, it’s funny how they sometimes hit on such touchy subjects.
I’m not quite sure if this is right or true, but one of my customers is a bit of a tech head reckons that you could most likely modify a receiving antenna to the shape of the “anti-theft detector thingy” at the front of most stores and grab and RFID data as people walked past. I’m not sure how true it is, but it’s a scary thought if it is.
trk
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 2:17 PMI had no real concerns over credit card RFID as I figured it was in the financial institutions best interests to make them nice and secure for us…. But now that they’re banning episodes of Myth Buster I am VERY worried. Why did they ban it? Was it revealing that they are unsecure after all? Is it showing you an easy way to hack them? What are they trying to hide about the RFID cards?
The fact they banned the episode makes me suspicious.
Dude
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 3:25 PMIF you’re worried about your RFID being stolen, drill the RFID Tag out of your card. Simply done..
spk
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 4:56 PMNot that simple. The RFID chip sits below the smart card contact. To destroy the RFID chip would be to destroy the contact.
ksp
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 5:19 AMyou can damage the rfid antenna to prevent it from working without damaging the smart card or the magnetic strip
Marty
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 8:05 PMthis is old news anyway. this youtube clipped popped up last year.
Jono
Monday, February 6, 2012 at 9:07 AMYep it is indeed!
Ed Powers
Monday, February 6, 2012 at 9:03 AMKnowing the actual story and not the Beyond press release would make this article better. Its not even current news.
Nickinator
Monday, February 6, 2012 at 8:10 PMWhy do people even worry about this? MagStrip security is a complete joke, I’ve cloned my Credit Cards for convenience, so I have one in my wallet, one in my car and it backed up on my computer. Banks have to pay the costs if your card gets stolen so what’s all the hubbub about?