PERSONAL TECH : ROGUE RFID vs STEWART/STAND - The Boston Globe by Mark Baard featuring the STEWART/STAND Stainless Steel Bill Fold.

RFID TECHNOLOGY
Stylish wallets with a stainless steel weave block rogue RFID readers.

It’s good to see a rfid-blocking accessories taking a stylish turn. A line of gorgeous rfid-blocking wallets from the Brooklyn product design company Stewart/Stand (stewartstand.com) will dazzle your friends, impress your dates, and protect you against forces unseen, or perhaps nonexistent.

The likelihood that rogue readers are waiting to pick off your credit card number may be small at the moment. The chances are also small that a thief will enter through your unlocked door, if you live in a neighborhood that hasn’t seen a burglary in years. But someone has to be first. Why should it be you? And besides, nothing says prepared like a wallet lined with woven stainless steel.

Stewart/Stand’s driving, breast pocket, and bill fold wallets are slender but sturdy, with covers of tightly stitched leather and steel mesh. The wallets start at about $65, which may not be as cheap as the last beater you grabbed out of a bargain bin. But I suspect one of these will last longer.

The wallets come in wooden gift boxes with magnetic clasps, a touch that my wife, Lisa, an art director, found most appealing. As for me, I’m putting a bill fold stainless steel wallet on my wish list. It will make a fine addition to the potassium iodide tablets and bear repellent spray in my paranoid’s survival collection.