The European approach to addressing RFID privacy

RFID is being used increasingly in different applications in numerous industries. Many of these applications involve the collection and storing of sensitive data which should be treated accordingly. In the USA, consumer campaigns and the public atmosphere favouring privacy have influenced RFID system design by preventing piloting the solutions which may pose a risk to privacy. However, in Europe the number of RFID applications has increased without significant public attention towards privacy issues. Therefore, the European Commission attempts to highlight the importance of recognising the impacts of RFID applications towards privacy and the need to protect data by launching the Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) framework. In Finland, where RFID use in companies is among the highest in Europe, RFID providers considered their competence in privacy and data protection issues to be quite high and they considered related legislation at least somewhat important to their business. Alternatively, their awareness on the PIA framework was slightly lower.