If you’re an owner of a credit/debit card that allows contactless payments (like Visa PayWave or MasterCard PayPass), you probably have worries like: “Can someone get my card data?” or, what’s even worse, “Can someone steal my money?“. And the answers here are: “Yes, he can” and “yes, he can“.

Theoretically, a thief can be even a few feet away from you (I’ll skip the part about how it is even possible) – but you’d probably notice a strange guy with a big case or backpack with wires hanging around it. If you track your expenses on billing statements, you probably notice transactions that weren’t made by you and contact your acquiring bank. But such thefts are usually on very small amounts. The reason for this is that it’s much safer for a thief to steal $5 10 times than to steal $50 a few times. And you’re probably not going to remember $1-5 payments from a place that you know you’ve been for sure.

How to protect yourself from that type of tricky burglary?

• Sociopathic way:  Avoid people.
• Sissy way : Don’t own cards of that type.
• Soft way: Set low PayPass/PayWave transaction amount limit if you can, or disable this feature if you don’t use it.
• Man way: Buy a special wallet/card case (this works like Faraday cage)

Wojtek

Wojtek is a pretty tall guy (2 meters / 6.56 feet) and doesn't talk much, so sometimes people think he looks down on them not only literally. But if you spend some time with him, you'll find out he's a really friendly person with a great sense of humor. Though still, at work (besides joking) he usually writes his code, sitting in the corner of the room with headphones on.