How can I stop SoftwareSerial from receiving data and re-enable it at some other point? My project involves and RFID reader connected to an Arduino Pro Mini (5V, 16MHz) and an Adafruit CC3000 breakout WiFi chip. The device reads RFID tags and sends them to my web service. I am using Software Serial to read the RFID device data.

After I scan something, the Arduino tries to send the value that was read to the web service. This obviously causes a delay and the program only continues execution (i.e. next iteration of the loop() function) after the data has been sent.

My problem is simple. While the value is being sent, the serial buffer is can still accept scans from the RFID reader and on subsequent iterations, because there is data in the buffer the device attempts to send data again.

My question is how can I stop the software serial port from receiving data while I am trying to send data to the web service? Then when the data is sent successfully, how can I re-enable the software serial port from accepting data?
Call serial.end() to stop receiving. 

Then call serial.begin(...) again when you want to start listening again.