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Contactless Card Fraud

S

strummer

pfm Member
Nat West recently sent me a replacement Credit Card, with this Contactless technology. I immediately thought I don't want this. What's hard about shoving a card in a slot & typing a PIN?? Plus I wondered if it could be abused...

Then I see these pics knocking about today, claiming to show someone on the Underground with a Card Scanner. OK, so Tech Radar claim this is all bollocks, but I know when I've had magnetic cards in hotels & work sites, they usually work in the wallet. So what's the truth on these things??


http://www.techradar.com/news/phone...-contactless-card-through-your-pocket-1315231

POS-fraud-970-80.jpg
 
The reader is only part of the chain of events you would need for a fraud to be committed. The biggest of which is the requirement to have a dodgy merchant to pass all the contactless payments to the acquirer. In $dayjob we've played around with really ugly scenarios where this sort of technology could be used to defraud, and the potential is not nice.
 
I caught 5 mins of QVC while I was deleting BBC 3 from my channel list.

They were selling a two plate card shield for wallets. So it is a problem then??

I watched a guy using contactless in the Coop today and thought I dont like that

I had a thread about this a while ago and the general consensus seemed to be shut up and stop worrying.

I still dont think they are safe and I prefer to slide a card in and enter a pin number while shielding it from prying cameras :)
 
I wonder if I could contact Nat West to have them disable the contactless service on my card.

If not, I'll just switch to one of the gazillion companies offering cards, as long as they're not contactless.
 
Neat West will issue you a non contactless card if you ask. It will be a basic account card card so you will lose your yuppie black account card if you have one.
 
This link seems to suggest that there is not a mahoosive amount to be worried about. I use contactless all the time, more so now with a bPay dongle on my key ring ... I often leave home without a wallet, but never without my keys.

Interesting that the Yanks are moving from contactless to chip and PIN according to that article, while we seem to be moving the other way.
 
Bloody hell, I'm crawling with these things & hadn't noticed....

Called Nat West. All their Mastercards have this & they can't disable it or offer an alternative, so cancelled it.

I had 4 of the fcking things from Cooperative, who I bank with for personal & business. Personal wise, they're sending me 2 replacement cards.

Business, they don't offer none contactless. The guy actually uttered the word "silver foil", I said stop right there. Cancel the cards (I really didn't need them anyway) & will be switching to another bank.



Much much more than the slim chance of being scammed, I absolutely object to having anything foisted on me without consulting. I loathe the way financial institutions (including Insurance companies) accept fraud (which they absorb into their charges).

I'm not a shopper. Cards are convenient, but I could easily live without. Let's hope there's enough backlash to make them re-think this one.

Can anyone tell me a single benefit this thing offers?
 
DuncanF said:
Errm ... contactless payment? I guess is was just as scary when horseless carriages first appeared too! ;)
Click to expand...


And the benefit over the 30 seconds needed to shove a card in a slot & type a 4 digit PIN are.......................


& it had better be worthwhile when I've got some nob at the bank telling me I have to wrap my cards in tin foil :rolleyes:
 
What is scary is the increasing hard ball being played by banks in blaming the consumer when fraud is committed. Many don't even follow their own code of conduct in giving the customer the benefit of the doubt whilst investigating the fraud.
 
DuncanF said:
This link seems to suggest that there is not a mahoosive amount to be worried about. I use contactless all the time, more so now with a bPay dongle on my key ring ... I often leave home without a wallet, but never without my keys.

Interesting that the Yanks are moving from contactless to chip and PIN according to that article, while we seem to be moving the other way.
Click to expand...

The problem with RFID is that the device doesn't know whether there is a low powered interrogation transmitter nearby or a high powered one far away, they also don't know whether the receiving device is a low efficiency one nearby or a high gain one far away. Because they are low powered they have to have limited data, this means you can deploy a high powered interrogation transmitter, a high efficiency receiver and a shed load of CPU power to brute force the things. It's not some one looking a bit weird trying to scan someone's bum you have to worry about, its the innoccuos backpacker or business man with a briefcase minding their own business.
 
Someone needs to supply a dead card from a closed account or out of date for experimenting. It shouldn't be hard to find where the rfid parts are and knobble them with a drill bit or otherwise. The swipe part should still work.
 
I'm an enthusiastic user of touch payment, in fact I don't think I've had any cash on me for about 5 months (much to he annoyance of my Mrs). I use a Secrid wallet for my cards which protects the card from scanning whilst in your pocket or wallet.

http://www.penshop.co.uk/search/secrid/secrid.html

A bit pricey for a wallet, but a great way to keep your cards safe, and the mechanism is cool.
 
Has anyone a good link as to how these cards actually work from a technological perspective? I'd be very surprised if entities such as large banking corporations would release products that would inevitably cost them huge amounts in dealing with fraud cases etc. There has to be a lot of very clever encryption going on here, surely? I'm struggling to believe anyone with a simple RF scanner could get hold of anything beyond a basic encrypted hash key or something equally useless.
 
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