Use a contactless bank card? Watch out for thieves bumping against you on trains
(Picture Facebook/Paul Jarvis)
A Facebook poster has highlighted a frightening new scam which may be targeting people with contactless bank cards.
A man was pictured on a train, wandering near people with a Point of Sale device – the same as those used in shops.
In theory, all that a thief would need to do would be to enter a price lower than £30, then tap the device against people’s pockets – and they would be charged.
Almost all new bank cards and credit cards issued in the UK now offer the chips, which allow users to authorise small transactions without entering a PIN code.
Facebook user R Jarvis claims he saw the alleged ‘scammer’ at work, saying, ‘So this guy was spotted wandering round with a Point of Sale (POS) device. All he has to do is key in a price less than £30 and then touch the device on the pocket that contains your wallet.
The UK Cards Association says that such crime hasn’t been widely reported in the UK, and that there are stringent security checks on merchant accounts.
The UK Cards Association also points out that the image doesn’t seem to show a British train – and that the same image has been seen in reports about similar crime in Russia.
https://www.facebook.com/paul.jarvis.180?fref=nf
‘Ching! You’ve just been charged automatically on your touch pay enabled credit/debit card…. We just tried this in my local pub with their POS device and it worked…’
It’s still not clear how many scammers are actually using the technique ‘in the wild’, if any – and whether scammers need customised hardware to carry out such thefts. Hacker forums already sell customised versions of shop POS terminals designed to clone people’s cards, so the idea isn’t implausible.
(Picture: Getty Images)
(Picture: Getty Images)
Jarvis says, ‘(I’ve actually shown people this using the NFC function on my mobile to read their card data through their wallet to freak them out but this is the first time I’ve seen someone doing it for real). Time to invest in a screened wallet I guess…'