Retail Report: Secret Shoppers
Clipping off part of a new smart label shortens item-level RFID tag reading range, allowing consumers to shop in private.
by Daphne Allen, Group EditorConsumers are a bit shy about some of the health and beauty aid products they buy. Feminine hygiene, hair color, birth control, and urinary incontinence products, for instance, are on many shoppers’ lists, but consumers often try to keep such purchases discreet. With RFID making its way to item-level packages at the request of some retailers, purchasing privacy may be difficult to maintain.
The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), for instance, explains the challenges with maintaining privacy when RFID tags are present: “RFID technology raises privacy concerns when its use enables parties to obtain personally identifiable information,” writes a CDT privacy working group in a May 2006 draft report on best RFID practices. “This information may be a person’s location; it may be that the person has a certain product in his or her possession; it may be that the person has used a particular service. Security concerns arise if unauthorized parties are able to obtain such information either from interception of the radio communications between tags and readers, or through unauthorized reading of the tags.”
The group recognizes that the use of RFID for product tracking can “reduce costs through better inventory management.” For certain product categories, such as tracking of pharmaceuticals, it suggests that “RFID tags contained on or in the pharmaceutical containers [should] be physically removed or permanently disabled before being sold to consumers.” The same argument could be made for some sensitive health and beauty-aid products.
Removing or permanently disabling tags, however, defeats one of RFID’s purposes—to facilitate product recalls. “Disabled tags can’t be used for later functions, like recalls and returns,” says Paul Moskowitz, PhD, a research staff member for IBM (Armonk, NY).
Aware of CDT’s concerns, Moskowitz set out to find another way to protect consumer privacy yet preserve some of RFID’s postsales-tracking functions. Moskowitz’s solution is the Clipped Tag. “It can be modified by consumers or others by tearing off a perforated part of the tag [embedded in a smart label] to shorten the tag’s read range, from about 30 feet to just a few centimeters,” he explains. “It can still be read at short ranges for returns or recalls, enhancing privacy.” And even though the tag’s reading range has been shortened, the tag still uses ultrahigh frequency (UHF), Moskowitz adds.
IBM worked with Printronix (Irvine, CA) and Marnlen RFiD (Markham, ON, Canada) to create the technology. “Marnlen RFiD designed the Clipped Tag incorporating technology developed by IBM. The label uses industry-standard materials,” explains Andris Lauris, vice president, business development for Marnlen RFiD. “As a label converter, we can work with all inlay providers.”
Marnlen RFiD worked closely with Printronix to test the label so that “clipping” it doesn’t destroy or remove any pertinent labeling information. The tear may be directed by the use of additional perforations.
Standard printing equipment from Printronix can be used to print the label and encode the embedded RFID tag simultaneously so that there is a direct association between the printed information and the RFID encoding,” says Steve Morris, RFID solutions manager for Printronix. While the current design features a tear strip for clipping the tag, other design variations could be used, says Moskowitz. A pull tag for wraparound labeling on bottles, for instance, could be employed, he says.