New Warning to Credit Card Holders: No-Touch Credit Cards May Not Be As Safe As You Think

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Orlando, Florida, United States of America (Free-Press-Release.com) February 7, 2011 -- The RFID technology was invented to make things easier for credit card customers making it as simple as waving your credit card like a magic wand over the scanner at grocery stores, malls, and other locations. If you were among those thinking that safe use of these cards was too good to be true, you may have been correct according to a story from cbsnews.com.

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New Warning to Credit Card Holders: No-Touch Credit Cards May Not Be As Safe As You Think

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The news source recently came out with a story about how the radio frequency identification technology is making it possible for high tech pick pockets to gain your personal information without ever touching your credit card or even seeing it for that matter.

Security expert Walt Augustinowicz proved just how easy it is for a crook to steal from you while looking like a simple passerby on the street. He was able to scan the card information with ease by walking by pedestrians with RFID technology credit cards and using a device to read it.
“If I’m walking through a crowd, and I get near people’s back pocket and their wallet, I just have to get that close to it and there’s my credit card and expiration date on the screen,” told Augustinowicz to a WREG reporter.

All he needed to steal the information was a credit card reader he bought online for under $100 and a netbook computer. He claimed that in a large crowd, he could literally steal thousands of people’s credit card information and then send that anywhere in the world making it next to impossible to get caught.

And according to Augustinowicz, it is possible for purchases to be made using the information scanned from the cards. “We’ve done it, we’ve picked up the phone, called 800 numbers, ordered stuff under a fake name, ship to a foreclosed home and the product comes in the mail,” said Augustinowicz during an interview aired during channel 3’s On Your Side Investigators. If you think that’s scary, read what he was able to learn from the information.

After about an hour he was able to gain information from several different people (with their permission of course) and tell them what type of credit card they were holding, what the credit card number was and the expiration date. In some cases it even gave him the person’s name. In total he was able to find nearly 20% of all wallets and purses scanned were using RFID chip technology.

Augustinowicz has proven that private information can in fact be accessed by high tech thieves but his motives for going to such lengths to prove this are in question. Especially since he is the founder of Identity Stronghold, a company that sells sleeves for credit cards and other RFID cards that block devices from scanning them. So is he really trying to protect us from these so called “high tech pick-pockets” or just trying to market his product? Either way there is a cause for concern and his sleeves do indeed provide a way for you to be completely safe against potential RFID stealing criminals.
WREG’s Steve Noll took the finding to University of Memphis professor and computer security expert Mark Gillenson, who found the news to be a real threat.

"It’s potentially a major problem,” said Gillenson. I think people do need to be concerned and should be aware, and we’ll see if this becomes a major problem.”

Also contacted by WREG for questioning were the credit card issuers themselves who seemed confident in the security of the technology.

Discover credited the security of their card to a special feature that is different each time the card is used. The company told WREG that the cards have “a unique security feature in that the verification code changes each time you use it – so that any skimmed data could not be reused.”

Mastercard credited their card’s safety to the fact that the cards are preferred over traditional metallic strip technology because customers feel safer since the card never has to leave their hands to be scanned by the cashier. They said that the PayPass credit cards and devices “are as secure as paying with traditional MasterCard cards that have magnetic stripe technology. In fact, many consumers claim that they feel more secure with PayPass because they never have to turn their card over to a cashier and it never leaves their hand.” Although one could definitely argue this point of view since most establishments require that the name and signature be compared with a state ID which gives the cashier time to see the code.

The bottom line is that one cannot be too careful with their credit card information. There are bound to be shady businesses hurting for money these days that turn their heads just to turn a profit. Don’t count on some of these safeguards always working. If you want to protect yourself from this new method of identity theft that could pose a real problem, then getting one of those sleeves is definitely not a bad idea. If you would rather avoid the possibility all together, apply for a new credit card that does not contain RFID technology. As the old saying goes, It's better to be safe than sorry."

More information can be found online at http://www.creditcardsprofessor.com/

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