Contactless bank cards

[David Walters]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 1:20 PM, Charles Lindsey <chl at clerew.man.ac.uk> wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Nov 2010 08:40:40 -0000, Peter Mitchell <otcbn at callnetuk.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Not to my son, who is paid minimum wage. And the skimmers can milk the
>> golden goose by concentrating on easy targets who will never notice the
>> fraud; drunks, students, doddery old ladies who didn't even know their card
>> was contactless. My son didn't notice it was contactless until I pointed it
>> out.
>
> How easy would it be to snip through the pickup loop on the card, without
> otherwise destroying the card's functionality?

Probably very easy. The loop is about 3mm from the top and bottom of
the card and 5mm from the sides. A small cut would probably do the job
and could be well away from the magnetic strip or chip. I'd test it if
I could reliably pay with the thing, the sandwich shop reader was
broken at lunchtime today.

David