People who use public transport are being advised to be extra vigilant as new scam which involves thieves using Point Of Sale devices to steal money from people’s contactless credit/cash cards.
The latest technical scam was highlighted on social media recently after a journalist for The Telegraph named Paul Jarvis witnessed the scam taking place on public transport. In the detailed Facebook post, Paul revealed that he witnessed the thief using the credit card machine to put in wireless payments of £30 and then touched it off people’s wallets while travelling.
An angry Paul writes: “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. “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…
“(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…”
It is understood the technical scam occurred in Russia but it is reportedly becoming more and more popular worldwide.
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 …
Posted by Paul Jarvis on Saturday, February 13, 2016
Meanwhile Visa has since released a brief statement to reassure customers about the scam. The statement reads as follows : “Since the introduction of contactless payments a number of years ago, card fraud has remained at historic low levels”
“The vulnerabilities claimed in this post would in reality be extremely difficult to undertake – not least because the fraudster would need to be very close to the cardholder and behave in a way likely to arouse suspicion. Additionally, there are multiple layers of security in place to block suspicious transactions so the potential reward for undertaking such a risky fraud would be low.”
“If a consumer is a victim of fraud, they should contact their issuing bank immediately. Consumers who have been defrauded on their contactless cards receive the same level of protection from their bank as they would with any other Visa transaction”.