Researchers at the University of Massachusetts conducted tests on 20 credit cards embedded with RFID chips. They found that they could grab the cardholder&39;s name and other unencrypted data using a small RFID reader. The information could even be read through clothing or wallets and from as far as a few feet away:

"The [researchers] also took data in from some cards and transmitted it to a card-reader in the lab and tricked it into accepting the transaction. Mr. Heydt-Benjamin, in fact, was able to purchase electronic equipment online using a number skimmed from a card he ordered for himself and which was sealed in an envelope."

Credit card issuers argued that the study used too small of a sample, that many cards have higher levels of security and that these types of attacks would be too complicated for identity thieves to attempt. With tens of millions of credit cards now embedded with this small gold RFID chips, it is a privacy issue that certainly deserves more study.  Click here to read the full New York Times article online.