I travel a fair bit. My passport is usually quickly scanned and I can enter or leave a country without delay. But every time I use the eGates at Heathrow Airport to get back in to the UK, my passport is rejected and I'm told to seek assistance from Border Force. Today, I think I discovered why!
The border guards are usually polite and tell me there's nothing wrong with my passport (not that they would tell me if I were on a watchlist). This only happens at Heathrow, all other machines read my passport fine. I can even read my passport's NFC chip on Linux.
I was following the instructions to use the gates - specifically this one:
After 3 failed attempts, it told me to seek assistance. As there were lots of free gates, I decided to test a theory.
I went to a different gate, inserted my passport, and held it down with my left hand. The gate successfully read my passport and let me through.
What's the difference between my left and right hand? On my left, I wear my wedding ring, on my right, I wear an NFC ring!
As far as I can tell, the ePassport Gate is only expecting one NFC response to its query. That's pretty reasonable. I suspect it prevents people holding two different passports in the reader. Most other eGates that I've used don't require the passport to be held down; they pull it in.
So, there you have it. If you wear an NFC ring, or have an NFC implant, be aware that it can cause "card clash" which could confuse passport readers.
17 thoughts on “Why my NFC passport didn't work at Heathrow's eGates”
@Edent I had a similar issue! When I was still here on a work visa, my residence permit card also had a chip. I kept both in passport carrying case and after several rejections at Heathrow, I realized that it would only work if I removed the passport from the case, thus separating the chips.
| Reply to original comment on hachyderm.io
@Edent
Oh that is interesting! i bet others have this issue and have never considered their ring could be the issue!
| Reply to original comment on seocommunity.social
@Edent that’s much more interesting than the reason I was told my passport doesn’t work at the eGates; which is apparently that there’s a tiny fold at the top of the page (from repeated use) and the scanning requires such precision that it can’t cope with 1-2mm offset 🤦♂️
I miss IRIS
| Reply to original comment on hachyderm.io
@Edent 😆 That makes sense. I worked with RFID & NFC readers a while back and depending on the tag style, device and model (mine were from Skyetek[1]) it might report incomplete read, all the tag ids, or the presence of multiple tags. We intentionally rejected multiple tags.
[1] These were great devices and very affordable. They had a good SDK and a few of the people on the small team behind it even got on a call with me to work out minor issues and discuss integration even though we were only ordering tens of units at a time. They were acquired and then the acquiring company acquired. Most of the devices are no longer affordable... looking at Mouser, Amazon, Digikey, and Atlas most of it no longer available or clearance.
| Reply to original comment on social.stonetools.tech
@Edent This’ll be good to remember when I eventually get around to getting an NFC implant.
| Reply to original comment on fedi.vale.rocks
@Edent I’d always assumed they just randomly reject my passport to fuck with me when I’m already tired and cranky 😬
| Reply to original comment on infosec.exchange
@Edent For many years I was unable to use the e-gates at any UK airport. One time a Border Force person told me, “The e-gates will never work for you, there is nothing you can do to fix this, and I can't tell you why”.
| Reply to original comment on mastodon.durrans.com
@Edent I am feeling a palpable sense of closure even though this has never happened to me
| Reply to original comment on ravenation.club
Friend of mine, who is about 6ft 7 could never get them to work and was told it was because of limits on the camera positioning and his height.
| Reply to original comment on mastodon.social
@Edent Mine never works in the UK, I asked why once:
The passport cut the very top of my head off (hair) and apparently that's no good for the facial detection on the machines...
| Reply to original comment on mastodon.radio
@blog @spiegelmama awesome inference, as our “noisy” tech moves closer to sensors we might not consider, the cross-talk is going to be mad confusing.
I’ve sent my wardrivers actively running through the TSA scanners many times in the US without being stopped…
| Reply to original comment on infosec.exchange
@blog Yup. I see this a lot with hotel keys: they give you two in the same envelope, and you have to take one out to open the door—the envelope with both keys doesn't work. This is however a rather novel variation! 🙂
| Reply to original comment on mastodon.nl
@Edent Ah! I helped a friend with a different problem with a similar cause.
Her mobile would randomly open a browser with a now non-existent site.
She tried multiple browsers and defaults, and they all behaved the same.
Oddly, the URL was that of a public library. Then I noticed she had one of those wallet-like phone cases, with the flap folded behing it.
Sure enough, she had an old library card in there, which turned out to have an NFC chip with that old URL in it.
The fix was to put that card in a different slot of the case, so the NFC reader would not see it.
| Reply to original comment on piaille.fr
This is a very Edent problem to have 😁 good point though
| Reply to original comment on bsky.app
Makes perfect sense.
We have this issue with building access cards.
As you conjecture, older readers can’t disambiguate or enumerate multiple replies. Upshot “loudest/quickest” wins.
A challenge of Heathrow being an early adopter perhaps?
| Reply to original comment on bsky.app
@Edent Reminds me of when the Queensland University of Technology "upgraded" all their swipe cards for RFID cards.
They chose the same frequency band as the ones the Queensland Government chose for their Translink "Go Card" public transport cards.
Naturally, if the wrong card got in proximity with the wrong reader… said reader (where it be on a bus/train platform or on the campus) would go berserk. I had to physically take the correct card out and present it to the reader, with the other card out of reading range.
| Reply to original comment on mastodon.longlandclan.id.au
I can't use British eGates either. Other countries ones work fine, but not the ones in the UK. Turns out Border Force's computer systems don't like my surname.
I find it funny that I've travelled all over the world, but I only get asked a ton of probing questions at the border when I return to the country I'm a citizen of, where I live, where I was born! 🙄
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