Contactless Payment Theft

You may have seen stories in the news about Contactless Payment theft; how it is possible for a criminal to merely brush against you with a new contactless card reader and steal up to £30 from your contactless payment card. It might be a good idea to consider protecting your card against contactless RFID attacks?

You can either decide that pressing a contactless card reader against your wallet isn’t a plausible crime (it is a plausible crime) or you won’t be affected. Or you can be a  little paranoid and go out and buy a screened wallet or purse, designed to block the RFID signal. They aren’t cheap!

However, you can do it yourself with stuff you should already have around the house – Gaffer Tape and Aluminium Foil. Ideally, you would have a sheet of copper mesh to use as it’s even more effective at blocking the RFID signal but several layers of aluminium foil works just fine – blocking up to 80% of the signal and rendering the contactless card reader ineffective.

Tools needed! 1 pair of scissors.

Start by laying out 3 strips of Gaffer Tape, roughly the height of your wallet and aboud 2.5 time the length. This will form the case for the foil

Tear off a nice big piece of foil and start to fold it up so it is a bit less than the height of your wallet. Make sure it is very flat!

Carefully place the foil onto the tape and fold up the tape over the foil and trim the edges down so you have a nice neat packet

Slip your RFID signal blocker into the notes section… and there you have it. 1 nicely protected wallet. No contactless theft possible and I have just saved myself £30 for a new screened wallet and feel a little safer when on public transport. Lovely.

OK – I know this is not my usualy Oracle technical blog, and Heath-Robinson inventions aren’t my usual story, but I do have a client who makes these machines and I probably know a little more about them than most. I’ve had one of these RFID blockers in my wallet for a very long time.