China must have a lot of RFID theft going on there, or they would like you to think this is a World-wide issue that nobody knows about...or cares about. I've never heard of anyone EVER experiencing an RFID incident. I wish BB would quit cluttering the deal offerings with these bogus claims of theft protection from RFID. It's like saying "Spray this in your house daily and you will be protected from wild Rhinoceroses rampaging in your living room."
I've been saying the same thing for a long time. It would be almost impossible to read a contact less-enabled card thru someone's pocket. Most likely the read would fail due to either under or over powering the contact less chip... But even if they got the voltage just right, it would be almost impossible to crack the encryption that secures the credit card data encrypted on the chip. At least this is true for the major card brands....
The other way to look at it is, if you need a new wallet and one with the RFI blocking is available, why not unless it's some rigid metal plate that's uncomfortable to sit on?
I often see discussions about skimming card info to use later but I wonder about another exploit, what if the thief emulated a legitimate merchant, initiated a purchase transaction as is normally done, then put the card reader next to your pocket with the wallet so the range was right too? They wouldn't keep adding more charges to your account, rather just the one and keep moving on to other victims so their account transaction pattern looked more similar to what a merchant would submit for consecutive sales to different people.
There must be safeguards against this too, in authenticating the merchant, but how many merchant cashiers are going to be able to figure out that they're being compromised? For example if you just walked into a gas station, wearing a uniform and had a clipboard work order, and took their equipment and left them the equipment you took from the last gas station, used and wanted to swap for a clean unit?
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I often see discussions about skimming card info to use later but I wonder about another exploit, what if the thief emulated a legitimate merchant, initiated a purchase transaction as is normally done, then put the card reader next to your pocket with the wallet so the range was right too? They wouldn't keep adding more charges to your account, rather just the one and keep moving on to other victims so their account transaction pattern looked more similar to what a merchant would submit for consecutive sales to different people.
There must be safeguards against this too, in authenticating the merchant, but how many merchant cashiers are going to be able to figure out that they're being compromised? For example if you just walked into a gas station, wearing a uniform and had a clipboard work order, and took their equipment and left them the equipment you took from the last gas station, used and wanted to swap for a clean unit?
Thank you!