Lou Sirico takes to task the Wall Street Journal over its recent article about consumers putting their credit cards in the microwave in order to fry the RFID chips in them.

The story centered on RFID embedded cards such as the Mastercard PayPass, the American Express ExpressPay, and Visa's Blink.

Lou writes:

It is a sad day when the newspaper considered by many to contain America's finest journalism propagates scare stories without checking the facts. Many of us involved with RFID are now about to get a new round of questioning that we should be armed with answers for.

Lou goes on to explain the difference between "passive backscatter" and "inductive coupling" -- two different methods for activating the signals in passive RFID tags. He writes:

"The payment systems referred to in the WSJ article are using High Frequency (HF) tags and communicate via 'inductive coupling'. The tag must be exposed to a magnetic field in order to be activated. In order to achieve a read range of more than a few inches, a very large, powerful, magnetic field must be created. To be clear, if you walked in-between two, 36' wide antennas, the tag might be read as much as 3 feet away. A great deal of power would be required. No-one is going read something in your wallet or pocket simply by using a small, battery-powered handheld device."

I've said it before and I will say it once again: RFID has to be the most maligned technology out there today. It baffles me why. There are technologies equally mysterious to the average consumer. Yet they are not the target of regular media stories.

The Wall Street Journal article mentions the TagZapper. Now, I actually have no problem with people using devices like the TagZapper. I view them like radar detectors, for your car. Like radar detectors, there will always be a certain number of people who have a use for the device and feel the need to buy one. It's an individual decision and everyone is entitled to make that decision.

But I also agree with Lou that major newspapers should understand the technology if they are going to write a front page story like that.

Read Lou Sirico's article, "RFID Rumor Mill in Overdrive" at RFID Switchboard. The Wall Street Journal article can be found here (requires subscription).