• ExtremeDullard@piefed.social
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    4 天前

    I’ll do one better:

    Reshaped payment card's NFC antenna

    My payment card was just a bit too wide to fit in my cellphone’s cover. The phone’s own NFC antenna is at the top - and I use it all the time - so the card had to be at the bottom of the cover to avoid triggering the phone all the time, in portrait orientation so-to-speak.

    So I dissolved the card in acetone to extract the NFC chip and its antenna, then carefully reshaped one end of the antenna so it’s a bit less wide (and since I couldn’t modify the length of the wire or the number of turns in any way to avoid de-tuning the antenna too much, I sort of accordioned one side of the rectangle to accommodate the extra length of wire).

    Then I set the new shape of the antenna permanently by carefully applying a piece of packing tape over it, flipped it over, taped over the other side to seal everything, then carefully cut around the new, ultra-thin, stubbier contactless payment “card”.

    Now it fits really smartly in my cellphone cover!

    • definitemaybe@lemmy.ca
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      3 天前

      Have you ever run into difficulty with needing to authenticate with chip+PIN? Like while traveling?

      That would be my big concern with this; it would make it very difficult to pass a PIN check, to say the least!

      Super cool idea. I might just try it myself and see if I run into issues.

      • ExtremeDullard@piefed.social
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        4 天前

        What I modified was in fact a contactless payment token. It had the form factor of a payment card, but it only does NFC.

        I have another card for chip+pin.But I almost never use it where I live, because all limits were lifted on contactless payments a few years ago. If I try to pay something really expensive contactless, it will ask me for the pin - which is specific to the payment token.

        • Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca
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          3 天前

          Do you mind if I ask what bank issued those? Why? Does the chip+pin also tap or are they features on totally separate cards?

          I’ve never heard of a separate tap to pay token (outside of perhaps transit passes or like, arcade cards), and never a card based tap transaction that asks for a pin.

          • ExtremeDullard@piefed.social
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            3 天前

            Payment tokens are very common. Usually they’re sold as keychains, wristbands or rings, and they’re provisioned to work with the myriad of payment processors out there - which aren’t banks.

            in my case, it’s a token from iCard. The way it works is, it’s connected to a regular bank account number with an IBAN number (supplied by iCard when you activate the token), and you transfer money to it that you can then spend with the contactless token. The nice thing is, if you lose it, you can’t lose anymore money than you put on it.

    • OwOarchist@pawb.social
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      4 天前

      I dissolved the card in acetone to extract the NFC chip and its antenna,

      Wouldn’t the acetone also dissolve the insulation around the antenna wire? So when it touches itself, it shorts itself out, and – electrically speaking – you only have one turn of thicker wire?

      • Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca
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        4 天前

        Wire that thin is usually insulated with an enamel coating. I’d guess it’s either unaffected by acetone, or just tougher to breakdown. Allow the card to dissolve, but remove and dry asap, don’t let it linger longer than necessary.

        Veritasium demoed this a few weeks ago while discussing tap-to-pay security and a vulnerability with apple pay+visa.

      • Korhaka
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        4 天前

        Only one way to find out, good thing that these don’t cost any money and you can just ask for a new one.

        Maybe take some cash out first to cover any payments you may need to make it it breaks in some way.

        • OwOarchist@pawb.social
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          4 天前

          If OP is using it and is happy with it, maybe one turn of wire is enough for it to still work, maybe with reduced range?

          • myotheraccount@lemmy.world
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            4 天前

            My guess is it wouldn’t work. On a magnetic antenna, the number of turns don’t affect range, but they do affect the frequency to which the antenna is tuned. It needs to be tuned roughly to the frequency the protocol operates on, otherwise it won’t work. In addition to that, these antennas also need to pick up power, which is also relative to the number of turns.

          • Korhaka
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            4 天前

            Seems like something to experiment with at some point. I do have access to test contactless card readers but not sure how they would feel about me destroying the test cards.

      • mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 天前

        Well if it dissolved any insulation, it will not work, as the coil isnt even coiling. It is not a one big coil buy just two ends shorted(or as in the picture, a very small coil. Since this works i can only conclude coating does not dissolve in acetone

      • InFerNo@lemmy.ml
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        3 天前

        I looked high and low for one where I could place my creditcard size tracker that isn’t also a flip cover, just a simple cover with a creditcard slot seems almost trivial.

    • pankuleczkapl@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 天前

      Amazing, I have never thought of that! I have always carried my card behind the phone, which is a bit too thick for my liking, but this is such a great idea, thanks for sharing!

    • kamen@lemmy.world
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      4 天前

      Kudos for the effort. With that said, this would definitely raise some eyebrows if you have to return the card when getting a new one.

        • kamen@lemmy.world
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          3 天前

          Knowing the reliability of our postal services, I would very much prefer to receive it in person. Of course there are security measures (activating it only when you get it and so on), but still.

          • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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            3 天前

            Our bank will just print a new one on the spot for you if you go to their office. As long as you’re ok with your name and card number not being embossed. They have to order away the embossed ones – but you can still pick them up in person.

    • JamesBoeing737MAX
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      4 天前

      Well, what if you need an actual card for identification in the bank or something similar? Do you just show them the dissolved one?

      • Ricky Rigatoni@piefed.zip
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        4 天前

        Don’t know about OP but gov ID works for that purpose. I’m more worried about when they go to a store that doesn’t accept tap.

        • definitemaybe@lemmy.ca
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          4 天前

          I was thinking about this, and there are two easy workarounds, I think:

          1. If possible, get a second active card in the same name. Ideally, a full-identical cloned card. Not sure if this would be allowed, but if not…
          2. Add another authorized user to your account and never give them the card, then just dissolve that card for tap payments.

          But, in either case, I do think you might run into a different issue: automated fraud detection sometimes requires me to chip+PIN, even for transcribed below the tap limit. This has happened to me when traveling. I don’t think there would be any way around that, and if you then fail to authenticate with chip+PIN, it’s reasonable to think that the bank would lock your card for contactless payments until you successfully authenticate the card again with chip+PIN. (To be clear: this is only speculation; not sure if that would be an issue in practice.)

          So, I suspect that whether this would work or not might depend on your institution (or maybe jurisdiction?)

      • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe
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        4 天前

        The only time I’ve gone to my bank in the last 20 years was to get a new card, or to open a new account at a new bank.

  • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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    3 天前

    We can go even further and create some sort of physical tokens that we can give to each other. These token would be secure, completely private, waterproof and even work offline. Maybe we could even put some pictures on them and make them vision-impaired accessible - the possibilities are endless!

    People forget that cash is a technology - a pretty good one too.

      • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works
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        3 天前

        I haven’t noticed, but my grocery store recently limitted their cash back to $40, so you have to split your purchases into separate transactions until you have the cash you want.

      • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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        3 天前

        It’s nothing compared to digital transfers. Sure you can trace via serial number but that’s mostly safe for us normal people. With digital transfer the privacy leaks can affect us normal people as the data can easily leak or be sold, stolen.

  • phx@lemmy.world
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    3 天前

    Man, this really makes me wish we had a more modern or powerful successor to the PinephonePro (that I could actually order from outside the EU)

  • stoy@lemmy.zip
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    4 天前

    Or you can just keep your card in your wallet, like you have done for decades

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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      4 天前

      It would have been nice if crypto didn’t turn into a network of pyramid schemes.

      Like, I am sympathetic to the idea. I mined a Bitcoin a long time ago (and lost it in intervening years). But holy moly, did it erupt into a tire fire.

      • jonion@lemmy.world
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        3 天前

        GNU+Linux is currently being used to kill civilians in several wars, but we don’t feel the need to point that out every time somebody says they use Arch btw.

        Good tech can be used by bad people without everybody having to distance themselves from the tech itself.

        That’s not to say that BTC is good tech, but it’s a decent proof of concept to free digital transactions from monopolists and tyrants.

      • __dev@lemmy.world
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        3 天前

        Even without the greater fool scam, it’s basic physics that a some dedicated servers will be more efficient than having every computer in a distributed network process every transaction.

          • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
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            3 天前

            It’s not democracy though.

            Whatever the ideals of cypto are, however user friendly could be made, in reality, it’s just fundamentally too easy to be abused.

            As-is, it’s one of those “it would work fine if everyone learned it in detail, and grifters would go away” ideas, and that’s not going to happen.

            Democracy is fragile and exploitable too, but it has a track record of working across general populations for reasonable lengths of time.

            • hirihit640@sh.itjust.works
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              3 天前

              What kind of abuse are you talking about? I doubt you’re talking about a 51% attack, which is incredibly hard. I’m guessing you are talking about social engineering, like where some scammer gets a poor soul to leak their bitcoin wallet or something like that.

              In these cases, yes a centralized payment system can be useful, because the authority in charge can just reverse transactions that are deemed fraudulent or the result of a scam. But that same authority can do things like ban all payments to Steam for porn games (like the recent Visa Mastercard drama). That same authority can say “GrapheneOS and Pinephone users aren’t allowed to make NFC payments”.

              In cases like these it would be nice for there to be an alternative to centralized systems, at least for those technologically literate enough to use these alternative systems.

      • Obi
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        4 天前

        I’m European, I technically have a MC credit card which I’ll use on the rare occasions I need a credit card, but the vast majority of the time it’s debit card or direct transfers (what they’re now calling wero).

        • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
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          3 天前

          Unfortunately Visa and Mastercard also own the payment network for debit cards in many countries in Europe.

        • Vittelius@feddit.org
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          3 天前

          A lot of European countries have their own debit card networks. Germany has GiroCard, Italy has PagoBancomat and so on. The problem is that those are national systems that stop working once you cross a border. Most cards are therefore cobadged with Visa or MC as a fallback system.

          What’s needed to get rid of the cobadging (at least within the EU) is some kind of translation layer to bring the existing European systems together.

  • diaphragmwp@discuss.tchncs.de
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    4 天前

    Ironic it’s a monobank card, it’s mobile only and you have to use a locked unrooted googled phone (or an iPhone) because big brother said so.

    • UkrainianBull@reddthat.com
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      4 天前

      Also this https://telegraf.ua/ukr/ukrayina/5935111-gorokhovskogo-chekae-pokarannya-yuristi-rozpovili-chim-dlya-monobank-zakinchitsya-skandal-z-oprilyudnennyam-foto-klientki

      TLDR: some woman did a facial recognition log in method, the bank said that the photos are not stored and deleted instantly, but because there was a Slovenian flag (looked like russian in the photo)in the background, she got her bank account blocked and the CEO posted the verification image online

      Edit: wrong link

      • Noja
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        4 天前

        makes you wonder what the CEOs of all those age verification companies are doing with all the photos

        • tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          4 天前

          We know that the NSA and probably whoever dedicated enough can potentially access webcams remotely too, and millions of kids now have cameras in their room at all times through their phone or computer.

    • FishFace@piefed.social
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      4 天前

      I opened an account with starling partly because they have a real webapp, but you have to fucking log in with your phone, which is half the reason I want a webapp: because fetching your phone when you’re already at your computer is just a ballache

    • Korhaka
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      4 天前

      Hope that doesn’t get too popular, I don’t want to have to carry a second phone just to make payments when I can use a much smaller card instead.

      • diaphragmwp@discuss.tchncs.de
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        4 天前

        Nope. The website says “get app” like 4 times. There’s a webapp but it’s for business stats only (like if you own a cafe). They are just trying to “appeal to the younger generation”, and one part of that is the app that spams emojis everywhere. Another part of that is furry stickers (“qr cat”) believe it or not; in physical, Telegram and Viber because everything in this damn country is held together by Telegram and Viber.

    • GutterRat42@lemmy.world
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      4 天前

      Contactless payment works without connection. Now, the technical marvel is that it works even if the phone is dead.

  • mEEGal@lemmy.world
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    4 天前

    Nice meme, but for us out there with at least a fully virtual card (some companies provide such benefits), we need a real MyAss-Pay alternative

    I recently found Walt, but it’s a work in progress for now. The app is avalaible though

  • python@lemmy.world
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    3 天前

    I’ve been using a magsafe card holder ever since I switched to GrapheneOS. Been working surprisingly well - I thought I’d forget my cards way more often, but it’s actually fine.

    The only two negatives I’ve had so far is that my snake got her head stuck in my card holder’s finger loop once. And the powerful magsafe magnet fried the magnetic strip on a loyalty card I have in there, so the cashier has to type my customer number in by hand every time.