Electronic pickpocketing is a form of identity theft in which criminals are wirelessly “skimming” RFID enabled cards to obtain personal embedded information. RFID enabled cards, also known as contactless cards, are built for convenience and speedy purchases, but they also put more than 140 million people at risk for electronic pickpocketing.
Contactless cards, which use a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip, can be found in the form of debit and credit cards, e-passports, passport cards, even subway cards. Any card that has a symbol that consists of four curved lines is vulnerable to identity theft. These contactless cards emit signal that can be read up to 10 feet away through a victim’s clothing and wallet.
Within minutes your data can be stolen by a fraudster who conceals an RFID card reader in a briefcase or laptop case. The basic electric card reader can be found online for less than $100. There are also free apps that help crooks proxy transactions between an RFID enabled card to an electric card reader, making card skimming easy.
Time and again the smart card industry attempts to refute vulnerability of near-field communications, and repeatedly ethical hackers continue to prove them wrong. Electronic pickpocketing, or card skimming, is a crime that is difficult to trace.
What Types of Cards are possibly at Risk?
- Bank and Payment Cards
- VISA® payWave®
- MasterCard® PayPass®
- American Express® Express Pay™
- NFC Credentials
- Access Control Cards
- HID iCLASS™
- Indala FlexSmart™ & FlexSecure™
- MIFARE™
- DESFire™
- US Government Issued Cards
- PIV, CAC, TWIC
- LincPass
- US Passport Card
- Standard Contactless RFID Cards
- ISO 14443 A/B and ISO 15693
With the increasing acceptance and widespread use of RFID technology, more cards are being added to this list everyday. Know your card and protect your information against electronic pickpocketing.
There’s no better time to be invisible
SkimSAFE is quickly becoming the #1 trusted brand for payment fraud and identity theft protection. All of SkimSAFE’s RFID blocking devices are built to the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 201 set by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology. This government-grade RFID technology gives you full control of your cards, letting you choose when the encoded data is readable, while preventing signals from being pushed to an outside source.
Learn more about SkimSAFE RFID-blocking devices, including smart phone card-holders, ID badge holders and credit-card and passport sleeves.