CONTACTLESS CARD SKIMMING
                     CONTACTLESS CARD SKIMMING- 
 HOW YOU CAN SPOT AND AVOID 
 IN 2021
Contactless card payments are massively popular within the UK. they  
have outdone pin payments and chip payments. Contactless 
payments  appreciated by 30%. 52% of all shop payments in July 2018 
were  contactless. All in all, there were 7.4 billion contactless 
payments in 2018.
Close to 7 out of 10 UK payments tend to be contactless, and 17% of 
all  25-34-year-olds make just one monthly payment with cash or 
depend  wholly on cards to make payments. This has led to the 
contactless card  skimming scams.
A good reason for the rising popularity of contactless cards is that 
they  are simple and easy to use to pay for a whole range of goods. 
Although,  by doing away with the need for a PIN code, contactless 
cards do permit  arguably the swiftest way to pay . They are just as 
readily amenable to  criminal manipulation.
How do contactless card skimming functions?
Contactless cards are equipped with both a chip and an antenna that  
execute a transaction. Upon holding a card near a card reader, the  
trailer’s card reader transmits a signal that is picked up by your card’s  
antenna. The card chip has account info by the aid of which the card  
reader can process payment.
These days, payments are limited to a maximum of GBP 30 and are  
generally used for minor retail transactions. However, there may  
sometimes be an issue with card clash, which is when two contactless 
 cards simultaneously engage with a card reader.
Since payments are batch-processed, contactless payments are also  
relatively instantaneous.
Contactless Card Skimming: should there be any legit safety  
concerns?
The engineers and designers who have developed contactless tech  
naturally swear by the tech’s impeccable security. They insist that the  
stories surrounding the ‘susceptibility’ of contactless cards are just 
that –  stories. These comprise, per engineers, the new Urban Legend. 
Let’s do  a recap :
# Are contactless cards readable from a distance?
hearsay/‘myth’ says : scammers would be using long-range RFID 
readers  to cull data from contactless cards from a distance, 
employing that data  to make cardholders’ accounts reachable, thus 
enabling theft. Engineers  deny this unequivocally. The NFC or near 
field communication used in  contactless cards makes use of a 13.56 
Mhz radio frequency tech that  restricts itself to relaying data within 
the briefest of ranges. As a rule, the  optimal distance is no more than 
4 centimetres – beyond this, the signal  undergoes progressive 
weakening and can never attain 10+  centimetres.
# What about short-range skimming?
Per the ‘myth’ (as the engineers quip): a scammer armed with an NFC 
 reader would be enabled to reach out to contactless cards in 
someone’s  pockets in someone’s pocket/bag in crowded subways 
and suchlike.  Thus, the likelihood of their subsequently ‘skimming’ 
sufficient vital data  to produce a counterfeit card or buy things online 
becomes quite  strong.
The engineers deny this. They assert that it is simply not doable to 
clone  a contactless card. What’s more, these experts are adamant 
that when a  scammer uses stolen data to make online purchases, 
they get caught by  the POS. Both the processing network and the 
bank come to know  immediately of the fraudulent purchase, and the 
wheels of Law  Enforcement start a-turning.
# There are chances of repeated purchases made, thanks to skimmed data from  
the contactless card.
The engineers discount this as a ‘myth’. They reiterate that the total  
number of purchases made will remain low even with a counterfeit 
card.  The total number of purchases made with an EMV card is 
limited in most  countries, with no restrictions on tiny transactions in 
succession. After  the said number of small transactions, there’s a 
requirement for chip  reset and PIN contact mode. The engineers like 
mentioning that the  concerned banks will cover the small amounts.
Are contactless card skimming Perfect Security Incarnate?
If we are to believe EMV developers, contactless card security is  
immaculate.
Engineers posit that, dissimilar to older magnetic stripe bank cards, 
EMV  cards deploy a smart microprocessor chip tech that – secures 
credentials  of the cardholder; does cryptographic computation to 
shield its  communication with the processing network and POS or 
Point of Sale.
EMV cards are vastly superior to magnetic stripe cards. DDA or 
Dynamic  Data Authentication is genuinely cutting edge when it 
comes to new  security defence mechanisms.
We are lucky to have engineers without an iota of doubt in their  
products/services. But the plague of thieving makes us disbelieve 
them  that much more.
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