John Grohol has an interesting little article on the PsychCentral website about the registration badges being used to ID APA convention goers. The tags have RFID technology for tracking the wearer. Quoting the article:
|How is the APA using the RFID chip in your badge and where |is its use disclosed to attendees? | |RFID tags are generally passive devices that allow a scanner within |range of the tag to read the information embedded in it. RFID tags |are typically used for tracking inventory, products and shipping |containers, but have been slowly making their way into other uses — |like tracking convention goers and meeting attendees. | |How it works is simple. Each tag has a unique identifying number |that a special device can read when in the vicinity of the RFID tag. |That number is tied into the attendee database for the convention. |Unless there are dozens of readers used throughout the convention |center, the RFID isn’t generally used to “track” attendees. But it |can be used to tell who passed an RFID reader — such as when |they enter or leave the exhibit hall or other areas of interest to the |convention organizer. |... |So I went looking for information about this RFID tag on the APA |website and in the registration and convention materials sent to me. |I came up empty. I could find absolutely no information about the |RFID tag being used with the name badge. Given the wonderful job APA did with the initial printing of the 6th edition of the publication manual, I'm sure that no one should be concerned about APA's use of the tracking info provided by the RFID tags. ;-) Some additional info about how to de-activate the RFID is provided and Grohol refers to APA's InPsych social networking debacle, I mean, service. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=4185 or send a blank email to leave-4185-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
