Putting the FUN into RFID from Facebook and Coca-Cola

Publicis E-dologic figured out a way to embed user data in IDF bracelets, and thus allow people to "Like" real world objects, places and events spreading the word about it on their facebook accounts.

They implemented these facebook-bracelets at the Coca Cola Village, a watersport, sunbathing, gameplaying amusement park activity-thing for teenagers. When the guests arrive, they are given a ‏ bracelet ID which transmits an RFID signal, which they program with their facebook login. They can then "like" activities and places in the real village, and their actions show up on facebook. Teenagers are driven by vanity like everyone else, so there was a photographer present as well, if you wanted to tag yourself in any given image all you had to do was wave your ID bracelet to the photographer.

This will ultimately lead to the public getting permanent chips.

Privacy advocates have protested the VeriChip, warning of potential abuse and denouncing these types of RFID devices as "spychips," and that use by governments could allow the tracking of citizens, increasing any moves towards a police state. In addition, privacy advocates state that the information contained in this chip could easily be stolen, so that storing anything private in it would be to risk identity theft.
According to Wired News online, and the Associated Press, there have been research articles over the last ten years that found a connection between the chips and possible cancer. When mice and rats were injected with glass-encapsulated RFID transponders, like those made by VeriChip, they "developed malignant, fast-growing, lethal cancers in up to 1% to 10% of cases" at the site at which the microchip was injected or to which it had migrated.


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