... wireless pickpocketing era

[Peter Tomlinson]

Peter Fairbrother wrote:

>  Ian G Batten wrote:
>
> > On 9 May 2007, at 01:58, Peter Fairbrother wrote:
> >
> >> "Smartcard heralds cashfree era"
> >>
> >> http://money.guardian.co.uk/saving/banks/story/0,,2074949,00.html
> >>
> >> Basically a contactless smartcard a la oyster for payments up to
> >> £10.
> >
> > I paid for my coffee yesterday evening with my Suica card, which
> > does Oyster-like jobs for JR trains in and around Tokyo, and as of
> > last month (hooray!) also replaced Passnet on buses and subways
> > (although for that your Suica card is a special case of a Pasmo
> > card). There's a huge number of shops that take Suica. I don't
> > know what the limit on transactions is.
> >
> > Moreover, I've paid for two meals now with no authorisation on my
> > credit card: hand it over, they pop it in a machine and hand it
> > back. There's some C&P, which amazingly interworks (or is ignored:
> > I didn't think to type a wrong PIN to check), but I couldn't
> > convince a Shinkasen ticket machine that claimed to do C&P to take
> > my cards last night at Shinagawa station, so I'm off today to find
> > some cash to buy them with --- I don't fancy negotiating buying a
> > train ticket in very broken English.
>
>  I'm not in Japan :), and I'm a little confused - they pop it in a
>  machine? then it isn't a contactless card, I guess.
>
>  I had envisaged pickpockets in a crowd with their seconds (I don't
>  know the correct word, but they tend to work in pairs as a minimum)
>  buying cigarettes on a radio-linked card, with the crowd man just
>  scarfing cards in the people in the crowd.
>
>  The crowd and person would not notice - and three or four
>  transactions would get them their next fix. The needed electronics
>  are almost disposable - the tech knowledge to adapt them little more
>  so.
>
>  - no physical contact, no exchange of possession, and therefore .. no
>  theft ? - abstraction? Don't think it's fraud - Nick?
>
Note the information about the rules: £10 max per transaction, need the 
PIN every 10 transactions. That's supposed to convince us that the limit 
of exposure is £90.

Peter