Cyclone Posted August 5, 2015 Share Posted August 5, 2015 The rfid blocking wallets act as a Faraday cage around your card and would probably offer the best protection against being contactless skimmed. If you wrap your card in tinfoil you may potentially be amping up the available attack vector, as the tinfoil is conductive and may aid in the receiving of the signal from the skim device. Only if you make the tin foil connect with the chip transceiver... Otherwise it will act exactly like a faraday cage. Of course contactless only works within a few cms, so ensuring that nobody holds an odd looking device next to your trousers for 5 seconds would also work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tzijlstra Posted August 5, 2015 Share Posted August 5, 2015 If you are worried about this, having a piece of tinfoil the size of a tenner lining your paper-money part of the wallet will fix it. This is not needed though, incidences of card detail theft this way are very, very low. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kidley Posted August 5, 2015 Share Posted August 5, 2015 If you are worried about this, having a piece of tinfoil the size of a tenner lining your paper-money part of the wallet will fix it. This is not needed though, incidences of card detail theft this way are very, very low. My Bold with respect, apparently this doesn't help, i dont know the reason for this but was stated on T.V. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Minimo Posted August 5, 2015 Share Posted August 5, 2015 I bought a protective wallet ,£1.25 from Ebay. No idea if it will work but for that price it is worth a try till someone definitively says they are rubbish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlexAtkin Posted August 5, 2015 Share Posted August 5, 2015 (edited) Only if you make the tin foil connect with the chip transceiver... Otherwise it will act exactly like a faraday cage. Of course contactless only works within a few cms, so ensuring that nobody holds an odd looking device next to your trousers for 5 seconds would also work. I believe the card only working over a few cm is down to security requirements for end-user equipment, obviously not something thieves will be sticking to. There were reports of the early units M&S got not sticking to this and actually triggering cards in people purses/wallets while they were getting out the card they intended to use. So its hard to know for certain if you are fully blocking the signal from more powerful devices, but as a rule of thumb if your phone has NFC support then download "NFC Taginfo" and see if your card will scan on your phone. Then try with whatever protection you have. I have one of these (no not the leopard print one) and it seems to do the job. I have mine right in the middle with various other store cards, driving license, etc either side. Edited August 5, 2015 by AlexAtkin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaffa1 Posted August 5, 2015 Share Posted August 5, 2015 The best way is refuse to have one. I know I have and some of my friends have insisted to the bank that their new card is not welcome and would like to stay with the chip and pin, all was granted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gah121 Posted August 5, 2015 Share Posted August 5, 2015 Online banking is the way forward Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kidley Posted August 5, 2015 Share Posted August 5, 2015 Online banking is the way forward Hoe do you pay Tesco with online banking? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Joker Posted August 5, 2015 Share Posted August 5, 2015 So its hard to know for certain if you are fully blocking the signal from more powerful devices, but as a rule of thumb if your phone has NFC support then download "NFC Taginfo" and see if your card will scan on your phone. I downloaded both NFC Taginfo apps for Android (there are two) and I had to place my bank card physically underneath my phone for the two to notice each other (Samsung galaxy S3, with the NFC chip on the battery). I placed the card on top of the phone, but they wouldn't recognise each other. I also had to remove my phone's rubber case before it worked too. I hope that's secure enough Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lesserthan1 Posted August 5, 2015 Share Posted August 5, 2015 Has anyone actually been caught out by these scams, or is it just rumours from facebook being perpetuated by lazy local journalists? I call shenanigans! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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