Contactless Payment in London and Fraud Prevention

[ctom_s]

I've been watching "Fare Dodgers - at war with the law"

Firstly, apologies if I'm not supposed to put this here, I know there is a thread on the programme itself but this is more about the inner workings of contactless fare system so I thought it appropriate to post here.

It was documented on the show that someone had defrauded TFL of over £3k using a contactless card that didn't have any money on it (so they'd tap in, card accepted, money not taken overnight, rinse and repeat). I'm just wondering how it is possible for it to get to that stage. Some brief research on my part shows that tfl would/should/do block any card they can't obtain a fare from after a few days, but that clearly wasn't working for this card. So what's gone wrong?

(it's possible the customer was not doing this and were not tapping in *at all* and only tapping out and I know all barriers let you out, but I don't think this was implied as what was happening)

I've also heard there are other cards which only charge a small token amount and which the full fare is never taken, and that people use these for months or longer so again, why would this card not be blocked?

It just seems really unfair the general public have to pay the cost of something which we're being told is preventable by blocking the card which isn't happening.

 

[redreni]

I didn't see the programme, but I've seen similar programmes and they're often vague to the point of inaccuracy when they describe how fare dodgers are doing things. I assume this is at the behest of the transport companies, who don't want viewers to be able to work out ways of dodging the fare that might work and might not be easy to detect.

If it were as easy as you describe to use a contactless card without any money on it to travel for free, I doubt TfL would have cooperated with a television programme that would draw attention to that fact. I've no doubt there are scams you could do with prepaid cards, but I expect there would be elements to the technique that wouldn't have been revealed in a programme like this one.

 

[bakerstreet]

I saw this programme, I have no insider knowledge and so I’m not publicising information that that wasn’t broadcast.

What I think they said or at least what I gathered when watching, was that the passenger began a journey at a ungated station and the contactless was allowing exit.

Presumably the same contactless would not allow entrance and one would have to force entry or begin at an ungated station.

This is my memory of what was said in the programme last night.

In fact, I think we were shown an excerpt of a spreadsheet which had an unknown origin but a confirmed exit station for all of the passenger’s journeys.

Available to watch again on 5 on demand for those who missed it here: https://www.channel5.com/show/fare-dodgers-at-war-with-the-law/season-2/episode-1

 

[cool110]

There was someone caught doing the same who asked for help in D&P here. What they were doing was reaching over to enter via the exit gate, so the system would always let them "out" then then try to collect 2 maximum fares from an account with nothing in.

 

[Hadders]

There are ways it can be done, it really depends on how they enter the system.

I'm not going to discuss on a public forum exactly how they've done it as I don't think it wise to do so.