Contactless bank cards

[David Walters]

On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 5:06 PM, Marcus Williamson
<marcus at connectotel.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Nov 2010 16:35:02 +0000, you wrote:
>
>>The banks aren't going to give up on this. Barclays has just sent one to my son, after he lost his old, contactful one. He didn't ask for a contactless one, naturally.
>
> What's the technology behind it? A type of RFID?

Yes.

> If so, what's to stop someone
> reading the card without your son knowing and/or making small transactions without
> his knowledge?

Not much although the risk is partly mitigated by requiring a PIN
every few transactions and capping individual transactions at £15. I
assume stolen or cloned credit cards are mostly used to withdraw cash
or buy high value items that can be sold on which in theory you can't
do with the data from the contactless bit.