How safe are the cards in your wallet against the pickpocket you can't see? Mobile and digital technology is enabling us to complete a bevy of commonplace errands in a fraction of the time they used to eat up when performed manually. As previous Mobile Mondays have covered, everything from organizing your passwords to obtaining a signature to close a deal can be accomplished by opening an app on your phone.

Now, this one-tap simplicity is being extended to our credit and debit cards, driver's licenses, passports, and other cards through Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, so you need only wave your card past a reading device to make purchases, travel, or complete other transactions requiring your personal information in seconds. However, this new- and rapidly growing- convenience also presents a troubling threat: electronic pickpocketing, making safety measures like Identity Stronghold Protective Sleeves a must.

Offering prospective customers improved speed and convenience in sharing their information with you won't do you any good if they think doing so puts them at risk for hacking, theft, and other dangers. This is a key point I make to my Los Angeles website design clients when explaining the need for privacy statements and other demonstrations of professional ethics and credibility. However, with RFID technology now being implemented in a current 100 million credit cards and all passports issued since 2006, many of us have been blindsided by both a new innovation and threat.
 
In order to read an RFID-enabled card or form of documentation, all a thief needs is a reader that can be freely purchased and attached to a laptop for easy and well-concealed transport. An e-pickpocket need only get within a couple feet of you to discreetly scan and extract information from the cards in your wallet. Electronic pickpocketing couldn’t be easier to do or more difficult to trace, so Identity Stronghold COO Walter Augustinowicz stepped up to offer consumers a basic and affordable form of protection: alloy sleeves and badgeholders that block radio signals.

Augustinowicz's lightweight, signal-blocking products are available from the ID Stronghold main site with prices ranging from $4.99 to $49.99. They are approved by the Government Services Administration (GSA) FIPS 201 product list, and are used by The White House, NASA, the Homeland Security Department, and other government organizations.

Thanks for reading. Jason.
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