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RFID tagged money not confirmed

author: www-data

[via ngg] According to this article, USD and EUR bills are supposed to have RFID tags embedded in them, since 2005 (here's an older announcement on the topic). Apparently, US Dollar bills even "explode" when microwaved. According to the original article, Euro bills merely show a flash on the very same spot when subjected to intense microwave radiation for 3 seconds.

I checked this with two 10 Euro bills I had in my pocket. The result: no confirmation.

The images below (click to enlarge) show the front and back sides of two 10 Euro bills I happened to have in my wallet this evening. The pictures were taken after a 10 seconds exposure to a 900 Watt microwave burst.

The result: unlike the original article states, there was no flash. However, along the metal strip small burn dots appeared. There is no correlation between the positions of the dots on the two different notes, so it's very likely that their origin is indeed the metal in the metal strip, and not an RFID tag. Also, you will notice burn spots in and beneath the metal strip on the side of the note. That's the point where the bill started catching fire and I decided to turn off the microwave. (Sidenote: upper note on the left image is lower note on the right image, and vice-versa.)

RFID chips in 10 Euro bills could therefore not be confirmed. I don't know the exact manufacturing date of my bills (if anyone has a clue, please let me know). The "2002" label in the top row is not the manufacturing date. It's the date that the Euro bills saw public light for the first time (January 1st 2002).

2009-03-29 23:30 | www-datarootshell.ro | [/digest] | permanent link