Company announces RFID-safe mailing envelope
With passports moving toward RFID, demand is growing for sleeves and wallets of all kinds; National Envelope Company sees a market among banks and government offices
The switchover to RFID-based passports worldwide has sparked a minor industry in privacy-protective passport wallets, which purport to protect the documents from phishers and digital pickpocketers. We do not know how successful the marketing efforts for these accessoriees have been (and it may be too early to say), but we think a similar but larger market can be found sellling anti-RFID sleeves in the commercial market. Many companies and institutions now issue smart cards of some kind, and these cards by neccesity must beshipped all over the world. Ready to ease fears that these shipments will remain secure in Uniondale, New York-based National Envelope Corporation, which this week announced RFID-safe mailing envelopes.
According to National Envelope, the Smart Card Guard functions by enclosing the card in a thin protective metallic barrier incorporated into a specially produced substrate. The product prevents personal data in the smart card’s embedded integrated circuit from being transmitted via radio frequency waves to any smart card reading device. Does it work? The company reports that it submitted the Smart Card Guard to testing by InfoGard, which found that the device prevented all communication between the card and readers — “even when placed directly onto the reader,” according to the InfoGard test report.
