Sometimes connections can happen in unexpected ways. Through a program with the San Diego World Trade Organization, Telaeris became acquainted with Allett, a wallet manufacturing company, and its owner Bridget Muscat. Both of our companies are competing for the MetroConnect grand prize for the best effort to expand our companies internationally.

My first discussion with Bridget went something like this:

Dave: You manufacture wallets?
Do you ever get requests for RFID blocking wallets?
Bridget: All the time – actually we have a line of RFID wallets!
Dave: Would you like to test how well they work?

Which led us to this article. Since our handheld badge readers can read any flavor of RFID, I thought it made sense to let our audience know how well their credentials might be protected by using wallets like those from Allet. We tested the three most common forms of RFID cards: LF, HF, and UHF. In our two videos below, we share our results.

Low and High Frequency

This first video tests how the wallets perform against

• Low Frequency (LF) RFID , 125 to 134 KHz
• High Frequency (HF) RFID, 13.56 MHz

LF is primarily used for company security badges. HF is used for credit cards, standard passports, transit cards, and some higher security company badges.

Ultra High Frequency

The second video tests how the wallets performed against:

• Ultra High Frequency (UHF) RFID, 860 to 960 MHz

UHF is primarily used for tagging inventory and vehicle access control tags. It is not often found in wallets, but there is a notable exception. US Government cards for SENTRI and the US Passport card both use UHF.

Results

If you are not interested in the process, below you can see the the table of the final results:

The upshot of the study is that for protecting your personal information from RFID skimmers, Allet’s RFID blocking wallets are a great choice.  However, you should not count on them for protecting your access control badge information for your company.

On a side note, the Allet Lux Sport RFID Wallet was so well designed, I am now using it for my primary wallet.  Thanks Bridget!