Electronic Pickpocketing

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What Does Electronic Pickpocketing Mean?

Electronic pickpocketing refers to the process of stealing credit card information from people in a public place using RFID wireless technologies. It is a form of identity theft.

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Techopedia Explains Electronic Pickpocketing

In recent years, it has become easier for hackers to use existing wireless hotspots and move through a crowd to steal credit card data using RFID wireless technologies. Credit cards are made with an embedded RFID strip that can be read by some wireless devices. This has led to things like contactless payment systems, but it has also exposed cardholders to financial fraud. To combat this new type of identity theft, credit card companies have developed RFID wallets that use a solid layer of material to shield the credit cards and prevent wireless technology signals from reaching inside someone else’s wallet.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist
Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.