Travelers wrap biometric passports in foil to prevent RFID skimming

A social media trend involving travelers wrapping their biometric passports in aluminum foil to prevent unauthorized RFID chip scanning is gaining traction on platforms like TikTok and Reddit. Travelers believe this improvised barrier will protect personal data, such as digital photographs, fingerprints, and biographical details, from being skimmed by criminals in transit.

Experts and authorities, including the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), suggest the risk is extremely low. The RFID chips used in modern passports, including those issued in Germany and Serbia according to ICAO standards, have a very short range. Much like contactless credit card payments, a reader would need to be practically touching the document to function.

Furthermore, officials note that the practice causes unnecessary delays at border controls, as travelers must unwrap the foil to present their documents. In Germany, biometric data is protected by law and not stored in a central database; fingerprints remain exclusively on the physical document and are deleted from the issuing system once the passport is received.