Identity theft Part II...wow!

[Loralee Reach 245]

The Future of Pickpocketing and How to Protect Yourself

 

Aaron Broverman

Dec 20th 2010 at 4:30PM

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You find yourself at the mall. Maybe you're one of the many last-minute holiday shoppers this season and just as you walk out with the last of your items, someone jostles past you.

 

"Excuse me, sorry," they say.

 

"Oh no, totally my fault," you reply with a smile. You continue on, but then it dawns on you -- you watch those consumer alerts on the six o'clock news -- and you get that sinking feeling...

 

A quick reach into your pocket and the wallet's still there. Wow, that was a close one -- or was it?

 

The news story below outlines a much scarier threat -- one that takes thievery and misdirection to a whole other level without even touching your wallet or handbag.

 

 

 

Ironically, the chip and pin technology used by EMV (Europay, MasterCard and VISA) that RFID (Radio-frequency identification) was installed by the banks to make it hard for thieves to copy credit and debit cards and tamper with their magnetic strips. But obviously there is a way around that. Though the Canadian government has yet to approve RFID tags in passports, credit and debit cards are still vulnerable.

 

"It's not surprising with RFID technology," says Robin Dua, president of EnStream, the company behind Zoompass a mobile phone app that allows you to transfer money worldwide. It's a Canadian companion product to the prepaid MasterCard Paypass, the contactless payment system demonstrated in the above video. "The way it works is you have a tag and you have a reader and if the tag comes in contact with a reader, it interrogates the tag for information and then the tag will respond back with whatever information is on the card."

 

Dua warns that this new security risk is a real and growing concern, but also points out that your cards and identity aren't completely doomed. "You have to be really really close to that contactless card, the requirement would probably be at least half an inch between the card and the reader for a proper read." This makes the risk perhaps less likely for women, as their handbag or purse would probably provide an extra layer of defense between the reader and the card. Those wallet shields seen in the video would be a sound investment, but people can also get the same level of protection by placing their RFID-enabled card in the centre of their wallet behind currency, receipts or other cards that don't have RFID chips. "A wallet maker could also put an extra layer of material inside the wallet to cancel out the potential of the card being read," adds Dua.

 

Security risks such as this one also serve to highlight how much safer mobile payments will be when the first RFID tagged cellphones hit the market in 2011. Your credit and debit cards will not only be stored on a secure element of the phone, but access to the mobile wallet application will also depend on user authentication, such as a user name and password.

 

"This means if your phone is ever scanned, nothing will be transferred or read," says Dua. "The criminal's screen will remain blank."

 

He also adds that many technology developers in the mobile payment field are experimenting with biometrics as a method for authentication when a user requests access to the cards on the phone. "It'll either be biometrics or a wallet button on the phone," says Dua. "The bottom-line is no one would be able to read the cards on the phone without some action by the user and mobile payments have the ability to mitigate the kind of fraud seen in the video."

 

Of course, if you are a victim of fraud on your RFID-enabled credit card, there will be zero liability on your end as soon as you report it. So, even though this kind of electronic pickpocketing will inevitably show up in Canada, it should be relatively easy to protect yourself from an enterprising criminal.