Originally Posted by
caspritz78
The original post is two years old. By now the RFID chips are safe by today's standards. The chip can only be read if the card-reader hes a key which is created when the passport is swiped through the optical reader. Without swiping the passport you can't read it! It is actually easier to steal your passport and read the pages with your own eyes than trying to read from a distance with some kind of listening device.
Really? When did they change the encoding of the data on the RFIDs? My understanding was that there was not a way to get all the countries that would be reading the RFID to cooperate on the encoding scheme so it wasn't happening.
I renewed mine just before the RFID was becoming the default in passports so I have a few years left without. That being said, if one does feel compelled to deactivate it, definitely go the hammer route. A microwave approach will leave marks and that would be bad.