And before anyone suggests it, the reason I'm posting here is because the bank has not satisfactorily explained it... Living on the periphery of London and having to use the London Blunderaround, aka the Tube, I have always avoided having contactless bank cards as I understand that these can get read by scanners & the Tube is a popular place to skim this info. As a result of an issue with a cancelled card, I have found out that my newly issued cards are not contactless as requested, but have had the contactless feature turned off; what I'm not getting is how you turn this off remotely; surely if the feature is still in the card, it can be read even if the bank has turned off the facility for the card to make payments? If anyone can explain this to an IT feckwit I'd be grateful.
IIRC, (for Nationwide) you have to use your card with the PIN once before the contactless is activated. In my banking app, there is a section to disable/enable the contactless function. Andy
I would suggest that the bank have disabled it at their end So if your card or a clone card tried to pay contact less then the transaction would be declined When using contactless, every now and then transactions are declined so the PIN needs to be used so the bank knows its you (not foolproof i know)
That is what I am thinking, which if I am thinking correctly means whilst they will not allow contactless payments, it does allow them the opportunity to lift my name, account number and sort code from the card which leaves me open to the possibility of the account being hacked; previously with no contactless facility on the card that was not possible.
Which is what they told me Andy; and whilst I’m happy to have a Nationwide banking app on my phone as it is my pocket money account, I don’t want to have a banking app for my main account; I don’t need it, and if the phone is snatched whilst unlocked then again I’m open to fraud.
The other options you have to drag you into the 21st century would be to use Apple or Google pay and have your digital wallet on your phone and secondly invest in an RFID wallet such as https://secrid.com/en-gb/wallets/all/ so that your cards cannot be read remotely.
As I understand it, if my phone is snatched whilst unlocked then my digital wallet is open use by the thief, and I have a perfectly satisfactory wallet, thank you, so have no need to buy another one. Have you considered that I might not want to be dragged anywhere?
That detail isn't held on the card. It only has the card number and expiry date which is tranmitted in encypted format by the chip to a unit trying to to communicate with it.
Thank you; if that is the case, how can that information be used to make payments, or is it that a second card is simply cloned with that information and because the account is set up for contactless the cloned card will work?
I expect the variations on how the scrotes can use your information once they have is varied. You can get RFD (Radio-Frequency Identification) blocking cards to put in your wallet to sheild your cards from Amazon -£3 for four.
64k phone thefts in London (down from 80k in 2024) across ~4m trips. These aren't just thefts on the tube, note, they're everywhere. That's 64,000/365 = 175 stolen per day The chance of a phone being stolen = 175/4,000,000 per trip = 1 in 22,857 trips If you travel on the tube twice a day it's going to be 31 years for your phone to be stolen, on average. > dragged anywhere? Robbery (theft with force/threat of force) was 35k in 2024, so if the robberies were all on a tube trip with a phone being forcibly taken that would be once every 60 years. If you're a lost tourist and you're walking in a tight crowd, then your averages are going to be a lot worse, of course. It's all averages, so take the figures with a pinch of salt, but what you read and what happens aren't always aligned. Refs: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/world/europe/london-police-phone-theft-china-gang.html https://railuk.com/rail-news/tfl-figures-show-the-tube-reaching-4-million-journeys-per-day/ https://www.onlondon.co.uk/londons-...of-theft-some-three-year-patterns-and-trends/
I appreciate the concern, thank you, and I'm well aware that what you read and what happens aren't always aligned but when it does go belly up, this is what can happen. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy8y70pvz92o "I've no idea how they'd got into either of my accounts," he added. "It's face ID and password protected. They managed to take out a loan, which is a laugh because I've been trying to get a loan for years and I'm not eligible for one - somehow they managed to." I'd rather be in a position that if the phone is stolen, it only costs me a phone & not a considerable amount of time sorting out the resultant grief, hence minimal banking apps, no digital wallet and a preference for non-contactless cards. As regards being in crowds, look at the avatar & what I get up to, I'd venture to suggest I'm in crowds more often than most on here, and that as I understand it is where the information can be read off of contactless cards without any need to steal a phone. As regards being physically dragged anywhere, I seriously doubt that would happen, but my use of that term was in response to a suggestion that I might like to drag myself into the 21st century. Whilst there have been some astounding scientific developments in the 21st century, some of which I have been the beneficiary of, there are also some "advances" that are distinct backward steps in my opinion; outsourced call centres and Chat apps on banking websites being two particularly painful examples today. And when travelling on the tube, if you're stuck at a gate behind someone struggling to get through it's a dead cert it's behind someone using a digital wallet rather than an Oyster card.
Ha - my mistake! Those RFID blockers are a good solution. Some innocent friend took the piss out of my car key RFID pouch but, as I demonstrated, the car won't start until you remove it from the wallet.
