Broken Chip
About 4 years ago I got an xM1 chip installed. You can see my excitement post here.
About 2 years later, it stopped working. I know a ton about mifare classic cracking and have taught many classes about it. Well it just completely stopped responding to RF which was weird.
I finally decided to get it out this week so I could replace it with a working one. It’s out and I found out why it failed. The chip was cracked and filled with liquid. That liquid is probably shorting the antenna. Maybe? I don’t know, but it still doesn’t respond.
I had it implanted by c00p3r (who has installed 100s of implants) on the back of my hand. I never hit the back of my hand or felt bruising. I don’t do sports, shoot guns, or anything weird that would have caused it to occur. I honestly don’t know when it actually stopped working just when I noticed it wasn’t working. I certainly didn’t shatter my hand or even have any bruising.
Inside the chip I could see bubbles and clear liquid. You can see a crack in the glass and some red near, on the inside, of the crack (probably blood during the removal procedure).
Here’s a zoomed in photo I took an annotated:
Even with the crack there is no internal damage to me, but there was some fluid exchange between the inside of the chip and the outside. I’m not sure if that means bacteria was able to grow or not, but I have no negative effects except a few stitches from the removal.
Removal
The removal process was pretty easy. I went to my GP and had him remove it. It took two attempts.
He used injected lidocaine to completly remove the pain. On Friday he did his first try with lidocane and cut the spot. He had me sitting up in a chain with my hand on a small table. It was after lunch and I hadn’t eaten, so I almost passed out. Not from pain, just being nervous. That’s just me. Duh, I should have eaten. We had to stop and reschedule. He prescribed me some Cephalexin, an orally taken antibiotic for bacteria.
On Monday we tried again. I made sure to eat and drink a lot of sugars beforehand. He had me lay down this time and I had no more issues being light headed. Make sure you eat! He used lidocaine again and I felt no pain at all. It took about 10 minutes of slowly cutting to find it. He was trying his best to make the smallest cut possible. Since it was on the back of my hand, it was really hard to find. According to my wife, who was watching the whole time, it was really hard to tell the difference between it and a blood vein since it was fully coated. We got it out and he gave me stitches. He said I really only needed 3 stitches, but he gave me a lot of really tight & small stitches so it would heal up pretty.
I’m still taking the antibiotic, and I feel little left-over pain from the procedure. As long as I’m gentle with my hand, I’m sure it will heal fine!
Response from Dangerous Things
I sent them an email and they asked for photos.
According to @amal, this is the first case reported of a chip cracking inside the skin. In my opinion, it’s impossible to prove if it was cracked under the skin or before implantation. It worked for 2 years, but… you just can’t know.
They have offered to fulfill their warranty:
We can also offer you a coupon code for the site if a replacement isn’t what you’re looking for.
Personally, I’m a little shaken up because I have some concerns on what the health impact of a cracked chip can have. Stuff could have grown there if it had a better fluid exchange. I still have 3 other implants, and I’m thinking about that a bit more. I’m still very excited about implants and RFID. Mostly the RFID though.
Update 8/16/2021
I’m doing really good healing up. The removal site looks great. All the hesitation I felt last month has disappeared and I have asked @amal to send me a replacement. I’ll probably put it in the same location because that was a super good spot. It reads really well on the back of the hand. I’ll have a little bit of scaring but I won’t know for sure how it’ll look until a few more months out.