NFC

Full Title or Meme

Near Field Communications (NFC) is used by some smart chips to provide Identity Information

Context

Many locations where a large number of Identity checks must be made at high speed, such as passports and door access methods, give the user an Identity Card with an imbedded NFC chip for easy access.

• One of the many Smartphone Wireless radios.
• Designed for close access, unlike BLE which can be accessed up to 10 meters away.

Problems

It's easy to read an NFC chip without the user's knowledge.

Solutions

• Some providers of Identity cards also give the user a tinfoil envelope to block reading of the chip, for example if a user gets an enhanced Driver's License in the state of Washington, they are provided such an envelope.
• Apple had blocked their phones from reading NFC data, but was forced to allow access by the UK government in order to make it easier for the UK government to check the Identity of people passing into the country. Home Secretary Sajid Javid is quoted as saying about Brexit “Our EU Settlement Scheme is now up and running and after a successful launch, over 280,000 EU citizens have applied so that they can continue to live their lives as they do now.” Except that their private information is accessible by anyone with a smart phone
• Android NFC API - Google first began testing NFC in web apps with the release of Chrome 81. That version added initial support for the Web NFC API, allowing sites to read and write NFC tags. It’s mainly intended for inventory management, conferences, museum exhibits, and anywhere else NFC is frequently used. Starting with Chrome 89, the Web NFC API is enabled by default on Android.

References

Other Material

• W3C TAG review of the NFC API
• Digital Guide IONOS
• Page on this wiki for Smartphone Wireless