Walmart to add RFID tags to individual items, freak out privacy advocates
By Darren Murph 
posted July 26th 2010 1:23PM
posted July 26th 2010 1:23PM
Walmart's been pushing RFID for years now, using it to better manage the company's vast inventories and understand where products are and how fast they're approaching. Now, the mega-retailer is about to take things to another level, and it just might push competitors into getting with the program. As of now, there's limited consumer-facing benefit to tracking pallets in transit, but a Wall Street Journal report suggests that Wally World will be placing radio-frequency ID tags on individual clothes. The initiative is slated to kick off next month, and it's expected to help apparel managers know when certain sizes and colors are depleted and need to be restocked. In theory, having this ability will ensure that consumers never see their desired size or hue as sold out, and if the clothing trial is successful, the tags could be rolled out to a near-infinite amount of kit. Of course, privacy advocates are all wound up about the idea, though it seems as if most sniffing concerns could be dealt with if the tags were removed as customers departed the store. Unless you're leaving in a hurry, that is...
Umm its their store. They can do whatever they want in it. Outside of it....take the tag off.
@John Doe,
Or, do the whole planet a favor and don't shop at Wal-Mart.
@Alfonzo Bolla I've shopped there once. And that was at Wi Dells when I was camping and it had been raining for 2 days straight. Was freezing in my sleeping bag so I needed to pick up another one. Since there are no Targets in the area the only option was Wally World. It was the first and only time I walked into a Walmart.
I made up for it by, buying a Coleman bag the following week when I got home at Target. :)
@Alfonzo Bolla
... and make your own clothes from animal hide, like the native indians used to
@John Doe
Whatever they want is a bit of overkill and is giving the corporation (which is after all an artificial entity) more rights than us citizens have. Now I am guessing you were just saying that they can do whatever they want as a figure of speech but there are a lot of things that they should not and are not allowed to do including child slave labor, selling toxic waste laden toys, so on and so forth. The public allows them to do business and the public has a right to say what they do.
Cheers!
@John Doe psst - Target isn't any better then Wal-Mart ;)
@John Doe
Seriously.
Big freaking whoop. The RFID can be taken off, just like those anti-theft dongles they take off at the register, right?
@John Doe
who wants to see chris or some other hacker screw with walmart :P
http://hackaday.com/2009/02/16/shmoocon-2009-chris-pagets-rfid-cloning-talk/
@PhaseDMA
Actually Target is a little bit better:
Cleaner
Better lit
More space between isles
Associates that do not look extravagantly
@tikigawd
Unless they sew it into the clothes, integrate into their appliances. A lot of products for Walmart are made by manufacturers separately from stuff intended for other merchants. So, theoretically they could custom order stuff with non removable tags from manufacturers . And those suckers (tags) can be microscopic.
@John Doe
Look at you being clever! I'll bet John Doe isn't even your real name. ;)
I bet UK this is very common.
@techlord I don't think it is actually, i've certainly never had any tags left on once i've left the store. Unless they're imbedded in the security tags which get removed when you pay (which would make sense).
@techlord
Stereotypes sure are cool, aren't they!
@techlord
In the UK, don't they just keep track of products using all the various security cameras scattered throughout the cities?
@bingster
To fail.
Do you ever learn?
No more "Shopping" at Walmart for me. :)
@One Love OMG walmart knows you lie about your jean size
@One Love
Maybe you should get a tinfoil hat too
@rstoplabe14 : Oops, *Puts on tin foil hat*.
@rstoplabe14 You obviously didn't understand what he was saying. If you pay attention to the quotes, his post will make a lot more sense...
@One Love
I can just imagine these as anti-theft.....*booooop* You..there...with the Trojan brand condoms, please return the item to the associate located to your left.......if nothing else you could hopefully embarrass people by calling them out on what they took lol
I'm a bit confused as to what problems privacy advocates would have with this. It's basically a "smart" door beeper tag that's on tons of products already. Besides, what information would the tag have? The color and size of the shirt, maybe MFG details?
Seems like you guys are seriously fishing for some nonexistent controversy.
@SirNoDroin The theory they are putting out is that the stores could put 'readers' all over the place and track you as you leave clothing with those jeans, know that you went to food and got some beer, health and got some condoms etc. And then know when you went to the cashiers, which one, match it to the timestamp on the register journals and know who you are and so on
@Charlik Or, you know, they could simply look at the transaction log from the checkout, which will already tell them you bought beer and condoms. And if you used a store credit card or a loyalty card, they know everything else about you, too.
@SirNoDroin people who are shy about buying condoms never use them anyway.
@infoclipper who says its gotta be a store creditcard? it wouldn't be any harder to tie a list of every item ever purchased at walmart to a particular card number, no walmart cant see what you've bought a say target, but they can most definitely keep their own internal databasees You do know that the registers/servers save your CC# right? aside from the cash in registers, the hard drives in registers are another thing robbers go after. Its a goldmine of CC and debit card #'s likely with very lax security though obscurity
I'd love it if I could just walk up to the checkout counter, the system shows me everything in my cart, I confirm, pay and leave. No more scanning barcodes. That would be awesome!
@freddyace And that's exactly where they are trying to go with this.
@bingster This is not going to help track because you have resellers buying all of them all the time.
I don't see how this is such a huge deal. People put all their private details online via Facebook, yet people are freaking out over a passive RFID device that is pretty much useless when its out of RFID reader range...
I'm currently in the tagging industry and this EPC tag is passive. Its not powered by any means, and cannot be read unless its in a certain range of an RFID reader..
Soon I will microwave every garment I buy...
Fry the little buggers.
(or invest in a RFID zapper)
@Slaarg or wrap your clothes in tin-foil as well as your hat.
@bingster
i want to tag all of my socks, they always lose their pair
This is all about costs...on time delivery, inventory management and perhaps most of all, a future where stores HAVE NO CASHIERS. One day you will load your cart...push it near a reader and either have your bank acct or credit card automatically charged or be told how much cash to insert into a machine. In this environment, EVERY SINGLE ITEM will require an RFID.
Look, I'll nuke the little buggers too...I don't want my tighty whities to be used as a tracking device either...but this is about reducing costs.
@motorpuppy
They'll only be able to track you underoos from at most 5 - 6 feet away! At which point they can just as easily track you by sight, despite your tinfoil hat.
@Rincewind Let me break this down for you.
Let's just start with Wal-Mart. Who's to say you don't just stroll past a reader on the way out, but also on the way in. Let's say Wal-Mart gets access to readers located at "affiliate" businesses. They already have personal information about he purchaser of the Underoos. Now let's determine if the person wearing them is that purchaser. Well, what else on your person was purchased at Wal-Mart and/or "affiliates" by someone using the same accounts? How much data can be accumulated and mined over months or years? How big and complete of a profile can be built over time? Google has shown the world how data can be aggregated, extrapolated and mined. I'm not going to help them do it. I'll either know how to disable RFID on my purchases or avoid them.
@motorpuppy Who cares if they "profile" you and figure out your purchasing habits? No one is going to stalk you because you buy both Trojan Ecstasy and Granny Smith apples at the same time! If you're that paranoid. Don't shop anywhere with the same credit card twice because they could aggregate all of that data too. Just because a big company can and might figure out what their customers are buying doesn't mean it will affect you at all. You'd be surprised how much many corporations could already figure out about you, but they don't care. If they did, you would only be a single subject in a huge survey of data.
@BLEH is my middle name I'm not that concerned about it because as I said, I will remove them, defeat or avoid them. The privacy concerns my not be Wal-Mart's prime motivator but the issues are real. No tin-foil necessary.
Now I don't shop at Wal*Mart much as I'm not a fan of the quality of goods they carry, but they're just trying to improve on their logistics here and not spook anyone out. I don't know about anyone else, but when I go shopping for clothing there isn't much more annoying than finding something you like and not having it out in your size because its a popular size and sells quickly.
@detonator
the ultimate goal here is Wal-mart wants to just wave a wand over your cart and have you swipe your card so you can pay and walk out the door without bagging. I have other ideas but if they aren't patented I dont want to give wal-mart any ideas.
I rarely buy anything other than food and MS points @ Walmart. However, as long as I can remove the tag after purchase, I don't give a damn.
I to hate walmart, in this bad economy I hate saving money on things I need to buy.
Hate to break it you all, you know those metallic strips in your Twenty Dollar notes (and up)? They'll be RFID tags soon too. So, while you're nuking your Walmart goodies, you might want to throw your cash in the microwave too.
@Tagny Taggart
That would be illegal because its state property just like you except you are replaceable. =]
Walmart only gets my money on those rare occasions when they have something I can't get anywhere else. Like exclusive Transformers figures (Yes, you read that correctly).
Other than that... Walmart scares the shit out of me.
As for privacy concerns? I have to side with Walmart on this one. It's their merch until it's paid for. They can tag it, bag it, stack it and count it any damn way they want until it is out the door (after having been paid for of course).
:LOL: @ thinking anyone that shops at wally world knows/cares anything about RFID's.
Privacy Advocate = Paranoid
I believe the privacy concerns stem from the equipment that scans the RFID's could also collect data from some of the new Credit Cards and Drivers Licenses/State ID's that contain them.
@OvRiDe the same could be done by a creep with a RFID reader in his pocket.
why would wal*mart want to scan your ID? do you think they enjoy getting sued?