Many have handed their card over to a bartender or shop keeper to tap the machine when paying, but you really shouldn’t
Paying for goods is even easier with contactless pay. A tap and away you go. But if you are asked to pass your card over to the bartender or shopkeeper should refuse.
Andrew Goodwill, the founder of the Goodwill Group against CNP (card not present) fraud, shared his advice with our sister title Mirror Online .
He said: “There is an unwritten code of good practice which is that when paying by either contactless card or by any other card, that the card should always be in the sight of the customer.
“If the card reader is not brought
to you for the transaction to take place then you should challenge why not and refuse to let the card out of your sight.
“The waiter or waitress may be all smiles and maybe served you very well, but do they have a card reader behind the counter? You just don’t know.”
You can now use Android Pay on your mobile as Google launches system in UK
The Mirror reported in February there is an app that could turn a phone into a card reader and pulled the details of several cards within seconds.
Mr Goodwill also warned of the dangers of keeping contactless cards on your person in general.
“Contactless cards have a security issue when they are in your purse or wallet and should be protected by using a Metal Card Holder wallet with RFID blocking technology
“Fraudsters can come up close to you and by using a card reader they can read your card details even if it is in your bag or wallet.”
Mirror Money performed an investigation into these claims in February and found card details could be pulled easily.
Phones could replace cash in nine years
It took the team less than a minute to search for an app that turns a smartphone into a card reader, download it then drop the phone next to a wallet to see if the card could be read while inside.
It could. Not just on one person, and not just with one wallet. In less than five minutes they had pulled seven people’s card details, all from different wallets and purses, just using a phone.
It even worked when the card was inside someone’s wallet, inside someone’s pocket.
And despite warnings about the danger of card clash , when the Mirror tried it with a wallet that had three different contactless cards in it, it still worked. All that happened was that the reader picked one and took its details, ignoring the rest.
The Mirror team stress that they used a simple, legal, app and could pull card details such as the long card number, the provider and expiry date.
http://nr.news-republic.com/Web/ArticleWeb.aspx?regionid=4&articleid=69925910&source=viber