There Isn't A Microchip Under Your Skin Tracking You | Vale.Rocks

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I’ve written previously about subdermal implants. As a result, I receive the occasional concerning message from people thinking they’re being tracked or the likes. Small, discreet, implantable chips that actively track you as you move around do not exist.

Important

I fear writing this is futile. For somebody with a mental disorder, this will likely not sway your already defined conclusions. It may even convince you I am somehow 'in on it'. I will not be addressing completely fictional concept ideas or unsubstantiated claims like 'the government has special powerful implants that are better than what civilians can access'. The technology simply isn't there, and we have nothing to gain from operating within the realms of fiction. 'You can't prove it doesn't exist; therefore, it must exist' is flawed logic.

If these things were possible, rest assured there would be a furry out there harnessing the power.

In media, you often see quick and easy injections. Take James Bond or The Hunger Games. Both are popular works which depict the protagonist being swiftly implanted with a chip deep into the forearm. Both are also pure works of fiction, with many outlandish concepts. Implants, as they and other media depict, are no more anchored in reality than the smart blood and nanobot viruses also seen in Bond or the fantastical prosthetics and mutant animals also seen in Panem.

Technology

When you see microchips, such as the ones placed in pets or the ones offered by companies like Dangerous Things, you’re seeing passive chips. They have no power source of their own and only operate when interacting with a close-range reader.1 Microchips cannot remotely track you.

The first thing to consider is power. How do you power a tracking chip? A tiny little battery? Some sort of kinetically charged solution like you sometimes see in watches? Location tracking is notoriously power-intensive, so a small battery is sure to run out of charge swiftly. Implantable devices like pacemakers have large inbuilt batteries, and even Apple’s AirTags – which are also of considerable size, mind you – only have an expected battery life of one year.

Then, you must consider the complexities of broadcasting a signal. Even if you do somehow have power, how does the tracking get done and then sent to the malicious actor? You need an antenna of some description, which certainly takes up more space, and then must transmit/receive a signal through your flesh and then possibly your clothing and then possibly through a building, avoiding all forms of interference along the way. Humans are made mostly of water, and water blocks high-frequency radio waves incredibly well. Even just holding a dedicated GPS with a significant internal antenna incorrectly can hinder its accuracy, and location tracking within buildings is a notoriously tricky problem. Burying an antenna inside your body completely suffocates the signal.

Further, the more complex these supposed implants become, the larger they’re required to be. You can make some pretty tiny tech, but even the smallest powered trackers are still of decent size. If we hypothetically say that tech itself manages to be impossibly small, a coating is still required and needs to be of a reasonable thickness. Coatings are needed to prevent the implant itself from interacting with one’s own flesh, and they must be of a thickness such that they both provide a sufficient barrier and are impervious to expected impacts and forces. For microchip implants, glass or resin is usually used.

Tiny little chips (especially ones doing complex work like real-time tracking) also get really hot. Implants are also extremely visible in x-rays – even shining a bright light through your flesh will usually show them off. The idea of a small, working, discreet, tracking microchip is nothing more than science fiction. If real-time tracking in a small implant were viable, they’d be rather popular with pet owners for finding lost animals in the same way close-range identification chips are.

Healing

Let’s suppose that some impossible chip becomes possible. Somehow, a tracking chip is made at the scale of currently available commercial NFC and RFID offerings. In such a case, it must still be implanted, which isn’t something that can be done discreetly. To implant something, an incision must be made. You need to make a hole in the skin and a pocket in the flesh so that an implant can be placed within it. You can’t just teleport an implant into somebody.

The larger the implant is, obviously, the larger the required pocket and opening must be. A safe placement must also be found. Microchip implants are always done rather shallow (which means you can usually visibly see and feel them). If you go too deep, they stop working. If you don’t go deep enough, your body forces them out. In general, it is an effort to stop your body pushing out an injection. Wounds heal in...