The Double-Edged Sword

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This Is How Easy It is For Thieves To Steal Everything In Your Wallet

Providence’s NBC 10 took an identity theft expert to the streets to show consumers how easy it is. He slipped an RFID card scanner (you can find them on eBay for as little as 50 bucks) into an iPad case and went to town.
The worst part is there’s virtually no way to protect yourself from scanners other than investing in a special wallet or credit card sleeves that block them. They can read straight through handbags and coat pockets.

Merchants probably love them because they speed up processing. However, the banks issuing the credit cards are still on the hook for fraud, so I have to wonder how much of a problem this really is in practice. As the report mentions, your name and the security code are not encoded.

3 thoughts on “The Double-Edged Sword”

  1. Because of convenience, not paranoia, I use an Altoids tin as a wallet. It’s just the right size to hold standard credit-card sized cards (and virtually every card you are issued to carry is about that size).

    It’s also all-metal, so I suspect it makes a pretty decent Faraday cage as well.

  2. It would be nice if they figured something out. I do almost all of my transactions electronically, although I use Interac not payPass or payWave. I do a lot of online banking as well and I worry about my password being nabbed by a keylogger. Money can be expensive if you use it all the time, because there always seems to be a need to withdraw from an atm.

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