The miracle of technology continues to astound me but am I paranoid to wonder how safe can it can all really be?
The following is a screenshot from Barclaycard, to which I have no affiliation or financial interest further than it being the company who now operates what used to be my Egg cards:
On my Kindle, a similar little symbol shows me I am online. Working out at Frugaldom, another similar little symbol shows me I have mobile phone network access and while at the caravan, yet another similar symbol shows me I have WiFi, so we all 'get' that it represents information being transmitted as invisible (to our eyes) waves of some description through air, land or sea. I am assuming they also travel through walls, people and animals, as they aren't flexible enough to bend around us - it does beg the question about how the cells in our body react to these constant streams of energy passing continually among and through our very core.
How does the contactless system work? I can see it's instant, requires no manual verification and limited to just a small amount of cash at any given time, but where does that leave us if we drop our cards, lose them or have them stolen?
Are there really portable payments scanners that can be carried by fraudsters and criminals enabling them to 'bleep' past us while in close proximity within busy places like buses, trains, stations, concerts or any other public gathering?
Should we really be resorting to tin foil or aluminium linings in our wallets and purses? Some would say so, because these ar already available to but online. Here's one I found on Amazon
GrassVillage® Aluminum Credit Card Holder Wallet Pocket Aluminium Case Box Credit Card Protection Waterproof Case (Black)
But before you rush off and spend your hard earned cash, I'm led to believe that cooking foil acts in a similar way and that if you carry two or more chipped cards then the data picked up would be a mix of the two, making them impossible to read individually without your knowledge. Still... for a few 99p items here and there, I'm not sure how long many of us would take to notice these small sums being deducted.
Paranoid, perhaps, but we live in paranoid times and in some cases it really is better to err on the side of caution. For now, I'll go with the flow and see if I can actually find anywhere within a 20 mile radius of here that offers this payment facility, assuming that AmEx will still honour their 1% cash back on relevant transactions.
