OT: Contactless card fraud?

[Roger Mills]

There's some merit in that but if you lose a non-contactless card, the finder can't use it without knowing the PIN (or your address for online transactions). If you lose a contactless card, the finder can make quite a few purchases of up to £30[1] without needing to enter a PIN.

Whilst the card issuers claim that they will reimburse fraudulent use, how are you going to prove that it wasn't you who made the transactions?

[1] I think that's now the limit. It started a lot lower and has increased several times. Will probably be £100 before long!

[whisky-dave]

as is cash.

I remmeber tickets too.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Have you ever used any type of contact less payment?

I've tried just waiving my wallet at to the reader, and it's never worked. Same with my travel card.

We had those cards early on for door entry at work. No chance they let you in without a deliberate action on your part.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Dave Plowman (News) laid this down on his screen :

I too used the door entry cards - Agreed, the card needs to be within around a couple of inches before it will work, either door entry or the DC or CC.

[Jethro_uk]

I thought it was 3 .. although a quick Google suggests it may vary ? The first few banks sites I hit just said "occasionally" ...

[Jethro_uk]

Nowhere near as quick. Plus the (bleeding) obvious risk of anywhere that has to hold cash.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

A lot slower at a self service checkout. My preferred type. Especially if you feed it with change.

You prefer to queue up at a ticket office to buy one? Fine. ;-)

[Brian Gaff]

Of course they can be cloned. I was on ch 5 so it must be true. I'm considering asking for a non contactless next time I get one in March.

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Those are making carrying them far too inconvenient. Also in the beginning when these cards came out nobody bothered to tell anyone what contactless was. Its not very descriptive it might just mean that no contacts are in the machine. Now we also have apple and google pay as well where your phone can be used for payment. Do you think perhaps I can have myself chipped to save all this. If its in the hand you could just wear an aluminium glove........ Brian

[Huge]

And the expense of handling it, which has to be passed on to the customer.

[Andy Burns]

Though check where the internal wires are by holding the card up to a bright light, I recently received a new card (of a type I haven't seen before) where it seems the chip is *not* underneath the contacts, but somewhere under the magstripe with embedded wires leading from there to the contacts and others for the aerial, you could easily cut a track that is required for it to work as normal chip-n-pin,

[Dave Liquorice]

Have a Smart Phone, Does it have NFC? If so turn on NFC and wave your phone over your wallet and see what it can read. I only have one contactless card and the phone can't read that when it's in my wallet. Phone might not be very good at reading compared to a shop reader or fraudsters though.

Stock tag apps will propably only say "unknown" but there are apps out there that will extract more information. Donno if the information extracted by a smart phone is enough to make a clone.

[Huge]

I fear you are almost entirely wrong. And card fraud is not "occasional".

[newshound]

I'm not surprised to hear that NFC is the same technology as used by smart cards, but I had sort of assumed that there was some sort of security used between "legitimate" card readers and contactless bank cards. Or am I wrong? Can anyone give examples of Android apps which can read such cards? Without delving into the dark web, I mean.

[Graham.]

Yes, there are some exceptions, and public transport is one of them. Don't forget pinless transactions were happening before contactless cards were around. The M6 Toll didn't require a PIN.

[newshound]

To date, I have steered clear of having banking apps on mobile devices (including laptops), I only do serious banking and the like from one desktop at home.

OTOH I would not be unhappy to be microchipped (like a pet) if I thought I could use this securely to access ATMs and/or point of sale in shops, etc.

Anyone remember the Blake's Seven episode involving hand-print recognition where Blake's big guy said to the establishment man "we only need your hand"? That's the scenario where you argue with the bank later. I do still have a degree of unease where something which could readily be lost, cloned, or stolen could leave you liable for substantial losses. I can live with infrequent £30 losses from contactless, it's much the same as dropping a wallet, or being dipped.

[Andy Burns]

NFC TagInfo by NXP can read cards

ReadID by InnoValor can read passports

[newshound]

Agreed. Oyster was a (minor) piece of genius. Am I right in thinking we have Red Ken to thank?

[newshound]

I respectfully have to disagree. Obviously, there is a transaction cost to be paid but surely this is much less than the cost of processing physical cash.

[newshound]

Channel 5, that's posh. I first saw the alarm stories on DM.

I was initially quite reluctant to accept contactless, after reading a bit about the restrictions applied, and the suggestion by the banks that they would not be "hard line" about claims for fraud, I have become more relaxed.

Some of the risks were there when "ordinary" cards were first introduced. I guess most of us have accepted that with current security arrangements, plus custom and practice, the benefits generally exceed the risks.

I could imagine that some of the same arguments were made when kings or states first started introducing currency. At the end of the day, "money" turns out to be one of the great inventions of post stone-age societies. Like insurance.