These cards, over 50 million of which were issued last year in the United States alone, are embedded with a miniature micro-processor and an antenna that broadcasts the account information of the card holder at 13.56 MHz. These contactless pay stations use a system that is not only inexpensive to duplicate on the home hobbyist’s workbench, but quite inexpensive, as well. In fact, $20 and a trip to your local Radio Shack will give you all you need to become a thief of this sort.

They call themselves “Cloners.”

The reason for the name is the process they use. They set their antenna, which fits easily into purse or pocket, to “ping” for cards that are RF (Radio Frequency) Enabled. The card responds by transmitting all necessary information to charge the account. This is, after all, what it was programmed for. The laptop or PDA gathers, or “Harvests” the data received. They do this in the most public of places, and it is absolutely undetectable when occurring.

From that point, the thief will then carry the information home or to another suitable location and begin the cloning process. Another wave of the antenna over a blank card, which can be purchased for two or three cents, and they have a form of payment that is electronically indistinguishable from the original.

Sadly, Organized Crime and Terrorist organizations such as the LTTE out of Sri Lanka are using credit card fraud like this to fund their destructive activities.

Does that scare you? It should, and it did us. To respond to this threat, Wisteria House Products of Phoenix Arizona has developed the Armadillo Dollar. It is a simple, low-cost device you slide into your wallet that blocks the transmission of these radio waves.

If you decide you want to put another layer of protection between you and the wireless thief with our product, use the code “TopDog” when ordering. That’ll take $5.00 off the regular $25.00 price, at least while we’re introducing it to the market.

It is, quite simply, the BEST RF-Shielding product of its kind in the world.

You have my word on it.

I am Ron Hatton.

We are http://www.ArmadilloDollar.com and proud to be All-Americans!

Please leave your ticket number here and I can find out what’s going on. Sorry for the delay, but I assure you it’s to make sure we’re not charging random peoples credit cards. You’d be amazed at the percentage of fraud orders we receive.

–EDIT–

Niko,

I checked on the ticket history and there were several things that tripped our system on this one. Kelly did a decent job of trying to explain them, but I agree our initial communication could be clarified a bit more. Especially with regards to the attachment size. Kelly and I will be working on this over the next few days. I hope you understand that this was not in an effort to make you jump through hoops, rather to protect the unsuspecting souls out there that don’t protect their identity/financial info.

I got asked for verification which I provided and asked for the reason i got flagged.

The reply was a oneliner “Orginating IP adress didn’t match billing adress”
And we didn’t recieved the attachment (scan of the passport)
The email didn’t even have a greeting , or a “have a nice day” at the end.

The given reasons is also funny , as it is my companies static IP which can be easily traced and looked up, and will for sure orginate from the same location.

At the moment i can’t even log in with my account to open a support ticket.

Yes this is the moment where I get angry with the support for wasting my time.

And yes , this is the situation

From a legal perspective, you’re covered (assuming you mail it to the billing address only), and getting a subpoena is never gonna happen realistically w/o the originating IP first.

A subpoena indicates either:

a) law enforcement has accepted the case (minimum $5,000 loss for federal, but they would still never actually get involved for such a “small” issue),

or

b) that the individual has hired a lawyer (thousands of dollars),

or

c) that the individual has filed a claim in small claims court (against a John Doe? until they get the information and use that to get the user’s identity from the ISP), which isn’t going to happen either.

I hope I never have to deal with something like that, but if I did, I would hope the company involved would be willing to provide that information without unnecessary red tape that only helps the criminals.