March 28, 2007

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  NEWS: Type of Contactless Card Leaks Info

  Contactless may be the way of the future inasmuch as your credit cards are concerned, but a new risk associated with certain cards equipped for this technology may have you leaving your card at home! PC World Magazine reported this week that millions of new cards being issued by several major banks are coming equipped with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), through a computer chip embedded in the card which allows the card to be read by contactless ports for quick purchases. Unfortunately, it seems that these cards can also transmit your name, card number, and expiration date to anyone with a portable RFID scanner, opening you up to identity theft.
  
  RFID is used commercially to track shipments and check inventory. Its effectiveness in permeating credit card security was discovered recently as a result of a joint study by researchers at the University of Massachusetts and at security companies RSA and Innealta, who discovered that these first generation cards contained vulnerabilities. The UMass researchers estimated that there could be as many as 20 million of these cards in circulation, with countless numbers more being mailed daily. Visa, MasterCard and American Express all had created cards with the technology. The AmEx cards with RFID actually have a visible computer chip embedded in the upper left hand corner of the card, while affected Visa cards feature a symbol on either the front or back of four curved bars in a "sound wave" pattern.
  
  Card companies have been alerted to the risk, and many are starting to put out cards that do not transmit the user's full name and/or card number. The good news is that identity thieves, hackers, and scam artists tend to prefer rip-offs that are easy to execute, and the study demonstrated that stealing RFID information is anything but. First of all, the readers have a maximum range of six inches, meaning that a potential thief would have to get closer to their target than they'd probably prefer. Secondly, the process of reading data from the scanners is not for the technologically inept. So your data is more than likely safe – but you can assure it by calling your issuer and requesting a card without the RFID chip.
  
  
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