[Discuss] Credit Card Capture From Inside My Wallet: This stops now

[Rich Pieri]

On Fri, 07 Oct 2022 13:59:27 -0400
MC <boumanmcc at mykolab.com> wrote:

> accurate) and continued out. Fifteen minutes later, I had cause to
> inspect the repair receipt and discovered that my Amex (which never
> exited my wallet) had been charged. Upon calling and then later

Correlation does not imply causation. I'm only suggesting that you may
have actually used your AMEX card.

But let's assume you didn't. What can you do about it? Someone -- in
fact a lot of someones -- will suggest RFID wallets. I won't, for one
reason: they don't work nearly as well as they're advertised. In order
for a Faraday cage to work it needs to fully enclose the object. No
wallet that permits access to the contents will do this. In other
words, if the auto shop's RFID system really did read your AMEX card,
no Faraday wallet would have stopped it when you opened it to get your
Visa.

Thus, I think there are only two realistically effective ways to do it:

One is to have Visa and AMEX issue you new cards that do not have RFID
chips in them. No RFID means they can't be read at any distance.

The other is to take one, and only one, RFID-enabled credit card, and
leave the rest at home.

Personally? I do the latter. I started going minimalist a few years ago
and doubled down on that with the pandemic (no contact payment started
making a *lot* of sense). Got a magnetic wallet for my iPhone that
holds exactly three cards: my driving license, my medical insurance
card, and one credit card just in case ApplePay fails at a given point
of sale.

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