Shoes

[Slainte]

From Consumer Reports:

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2011/june/money/credit-card-fraud/rfid-credit-ca...

<h4 style="font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 16px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin: auto 0px 0px; padding-top: 0px;"> Quoting from article:</h4> <h4 style="font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 16px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin: auto 0px 0px; padding-top: 0px;"> Mixed results for shields</h4>

The absence of a flood of fraud reports linked to the cards is not proof of their security, though, according to Kevin Fu, a University of Massachusetts at Amherst assistant professor who has published research on the topic. Because the contactless cards in circulation in the U.S. represent only 3.5 percent of the total debit and credit cards in use, they have not yet presented a big enough target to lure many crooks, especially when traditional magnetic stripe cards are so easily counterfeited.

Shields or wallets marketed as RFID-blocking devices can make it more difficult for someone with an electronic reader to read your cards, but they don’t entirely block transmission of card data. When Recursion’s security experts tested 10 types of shields and wallets currently being sold to protect contactless cards, they found that none blocked the signal completely, and there was dramatic variability even among samples of the same brand. Using a different approach, Recursion’s experts created a credit-card-sized jamming device for the wallet that prevents cards from responding to any reader.

Our reporter offered her own homemade shield constructed of duct tape and lined with aluminium foil. It provided better protection than eight of the 10 commercial products, including a stainless-steel “RFID blocking” wallet selling online for about $60.