I had a great thumb drive on my keychain (a LaCie iAmAKey), right next to the electronic key fob I use to beep myself into my apartment. Recently it's given up the ghost, refusing to be recognized on any system. It can't be read or re-initialized, and all signs point to some kind of physical damage.
While there's the chance that the contacts of the keys were damaged in some way, since they are exposed next to jangling keys all day, they look fine to me. What I was wondering, though: could the flash drive, getting pressed between my electronic key fob and the receiver so often, having signals transmitted through it to open my apartment door, have gotten damaged in this way?
My apartment fob looks something like this: