How can pickpocketing or skimming occur while your banking card is in your
bag or pocket of pants or coat?
Using this little device, we will show you how
you can easily fall victim to
touch free pickpocketing.
But before we do that, we will contact a few banks and ask them up to which amount it is possible to use touch free payment?
The maximum amount is €50 and below €25 you don't have to enter a pin code, but you do have to for amounts
between €25 and €50.
Is it possible to use touch free payment for amounts exceeding € 50?
er ..... you'd have to slot in your bank card, yes.
But then, could you use touch free payment for, say, a €1,000 television
in that manner?
Like you said, imagine you're buying a € 1,000 television.
then you have to pay by slotting in your bank card and entering your pin code
to confirm the transaction and then the system will allow the payment.
If you would, for that € 1,000 indicated on the machine,
just hold your bank card against it, then it won't debit your account.
OK, thank you, good bye.
So these banks erroneously think that €50 is the maximum amount
to use contact free payment for and that you are required to slot your card into the
machine for amounts of more than €50.
Many people think the same thing, but it is not true.
Basically, you can use touch free payment for any amount
and that's the way that you may be skimmed touch free for thousands or euros.
This is a new type of pin machine for businesses that allows their customers touch free payment.
I don't own a business myself, so I cycled over to the Chamber of Commerce, registered a company and then I could order this device.
I then linked it to my own private account, so if I now
want to pickpocket or skim someone, the money will be transferred directly to my own private account.
In a moment we will go and see, in that shopping street over there, how you may be skimmed or your pockets picked for hundreds or thousands of euros.
But first we will show you how to steal small amounts in this way. We don't need the bank card itself for that purpose
and we definitely don't need the pin code. This way, you can pickpocket €25 from someone each time.
On my phone, I set an amount - €1 in this case.
I pick a pin machine.
The bank card can be located inside the bag.
And then you can, with this decive and straight through the bag, steal €1.
I've now performed the payment
and received its confirmation on my phone.
2378 is the PIN that she's just entered
but I might have waited until she'd moved away and taken a thermal image photo.
This shows which keys she entered in which order.
She puts her bank card in her right pocket,
now I will follow her. I will make contact with this device
and then I can completely empty her bank card .
So I've now made contact with her bank card and entered €200 in my device.
She's walking over there with her bank card. If I now enter her PIN 2378
I will receive €200 into my bank account.
Naturally, criminals do not use their own names for these actions.
They will use money mules. A money mule is someone who will lend his bank card to others.
Criminals will immediately empty the account where this amount was transferred to
and then reap the rewards.
So how can you prevent falling victim to touch free pickpocketing?
There are a few possibilities.
You can cancel touch free payment completely, using the app or online banking,
but that's not very practical because it is also a very easy way of paying for stuff.
You can also lower the maximum daily amount that you can pay with a bank card.
It might now be set to €2,500 while you never pay more than a few hundred euros a day with your bank card.
There are other ways to prevent you from becoming a victim.
Metal is one of them. If, for example, you put your bank card behind a piece of aluminum like this, it is impossible for others to pickpocket you touch free.
The same goes for a wallet with metal casing.
Finally, a tip on how to prevent someone else from finding out your PIN.
A simple way is, of course, to keep one hand over the other to prevent someone else from seeing which PIN you are entering.
But these days there's the possibility of thermal image photography. Once you've left the pin machine,
someone else can take a photo and then
see which numbers you have entered and in which order.
We feel that banks should do more to make touch free payment more secure,
in any case for amounts of over €50, for example
by requiring you to always slot your card into the machine in those cases.
Proceed to our website for more information on touch free payment of payment in general.
