You’ve just been in a busy, temporary place such as a fair or a farmer’s market. It’s so busy you’ve been bumped into several times. You have a good time, you go home, and you realize you might have a little less in your bank account than you thought.

Checking your transactions, you realize that you’ve been charged - possibly multiple times - by a vendor you don’t recognize. It’s not one of your regular accounts. You check with your spouse, and they haven’t charged anything either.

Sensibly, you cancel your card and get another, assuming it’s been compromised, and then you wonder: how did this happen?

Well, congratuations. You’ve been a victim of the Ghost Tapping scam. This scam uses a payment reader to read peoples’ cards, including those on phones. It has to be relatively close - that’s why often the scammer has to bump into you for the card reader to read your card, as if you tapped it on the payment terminal. This is because modern cards use technologies such as NFC and RFID to “tap” - and it just happens that they were close enough to do so. These payments are usually small enough that the financial system doesn’t ask for a pin, but the scammer might be able to take multiple payments.

How to Protect Yourself
Turn off the tap-to-pay on your phone, if possible, turning it back on when you expect to make a payment.

For physical cards, invest in a RFID-blocking sleeve wallet. These prevent scammers from being able to read your card in the first place.

You may also wish to set up alerts for any payments that are taken out of your bank account - it won’t protect you from the theft, but at least you’ll find out quicker than without it. Note that this may take a minute or two to show up, depending on your bank and connection.