@crazykarens/Twitter
September 15, 2021, 7:54 am
A video in which a woman claims Victoria’s Secret is tracking and trafficking young women through a tag on its bras is stirring up conspiracy theorists — despite this exact same line of thought being widely disproven just last year.
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It’s unclear if the video was recorded this year, although the woman notes that she is recording on Labor Day. She then tells viewers that she “just watched a video,” which presumably warned her of this heinous thing that Victoria’s Secret is definitely not actually doing and set her off on this embarrassing course of action.
It isn’t long before she’s spreading her PINK bra across a flat surface and cutting off the tags while issuing her own warning.
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“I’m cutting off this tag and they are tracking us. They are human trafficking us,” she says, ripping the layers off the tag. “This is how they find your daughter. This, folks. Look in the bras. Get rid of this. This is a tracking device. It even has little numbers on it down here. They are tracking your children.”
What the woman ultimately held up was a portion of the tag that, yes, has numbers on it, as many everyday objects do. But it isn’t a tracking device.
According to multiple fact-checkers as well as Victoria’s Secret themselves, what the woman is holding is actually a passive RFID tag. That technology is used by a number of other retailers and keeps track of inventory inside of a store. Scanners have a very minimal range and don’t pick up information about tags further than about 15 feet away.
“I can’t think of how anyone could use those maliciously,” Justin Patton, an expert in RFID technology, told AP News last year.
In fact, actually, really tracking people would require significantly more in-depth technology that you simply would not find in an ultra-thin $30 bra tag.
If this sounds like common sense, it’s because it is. But common sense has gone out the window for some with the rise of QAnon, dismissal of scientists and expert opinions, and the propensity of some to believe literally anything they read on the internet that makes them feel part of an inner circle that’s more in the know than the “sheep” who believe…facts.
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Of course, the idea that we’re all being tracked in and of itself isn’t crazy, but for everyone freaking out about little tags in bras…well, if you’re using your smartphone to upload a video about it to Facebook, you might want to reassess where the real threat to your privacy is coming from.
*First Published: September 15, 2021, 7:54 am
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