What is the 'range' of an Oyster card/reader?

[Capybara]

It's probably been done on here before but I'm still quite new in these parts so please bear with me. I'm also not quite sure which category this comes under (ticketing, NR general or infrastructure) but I'm still quite ......

I carry my Oyster PAYG card around with me almost all of the time, but also have to travel from inside to just outside of the zone a couple of times a week for which I purchase a paper ticket. This necessitates me using the paper ticket to go through a barrier with a reader once on the way out and once on the way back in again later in the day. How careless do I have to be to register an uncompleted journey on my Oyster card when passing through the barrier on such occasions?

 

[Daniel]

About an inch

Also, if you do get an incomplete journey, drop an e-mail to the Oyster Helpdesk explaining what's happened and they should hopefully sort you out!

 

[A60K]

I've only once accidentally registered an Oyster touch on the barriers.

I was using a paper ODT which I kept in my wallet, and after I got the ticket out to exit I kept the wallet in my hand while trying to put the ticket into the barrier. But in attempting to do this I managed to wave my Oyster (in my wallet) close enough to the reader to cause it to register, and then spill the contents of the wallet all over the floor...

Sorted out at the ticket office no problem - I showed the paper ticket and explained what I had done, and this seemed to be quite funny to the ticket clerk

 

[Capybara]

Thanks chaps. I can confirm the helfulness of the Oyster people, from the eight occasions I have had to use them in the past on a different issue, caused by a software bug I was eventually informed.

 

[WatcherZero]

Of course the readers in oyster machines are designed to be short range. Someone with a laptop and a small but powerful aerial could read your osyster card across a cafe or room.

 

[Barn]

Of course the readers in oyster machines are designed to be short range. Someone with a laptop and a small but powerful aerial could read your osyster card across a cafe or room.

Remember that an oyster card isn't constantly throwing out a signal. It needs a current to be electromagnetically induced in it. I imagine that would be difficult from across a room!

 

[WatcherZero]

Actually no, the required induction is very weak, the same vulnerability as with chip and pin cards that require a current to be induced to read. In fact far less power has to be induced than for example the interference your mobile phone causes in speakers. Also similar is the directional beams used in shops for security tags.

 

[Daniel]

Although if you can waste the money to buy the equipment and the time taken to extract data from a random oyster card then use it to in some form operate a gate, I don't see why you just don't buy a ticket.

Besides, if you go and hold up an aerial to an oyster pad and the gate opens, it's a pretty obvious sign for an RPI that you've not got a valid ticket.

 

[causton]

Although if you can waste the money to buy the equipment and the time taken to extract data from a random oyster card then use it to in some form operate a gate, I don't see why you just don't buy a ticket.

Besides, if you go and hold up an aerial to an oyster pad and the gate opens, it's a pretty obvious sign for an RPI that you've not got a valid ticket.

Also, isn't the data (i.e. balance, maybe last journey?) stored on the actual card itself? It would be obvious something's up when the proper card says it has £50 and the TfL database says £2!

 

[WatcherZero]

No you have a progammable card (chip wired to a laptop or hand held device) and you load it with another cards cloned identity.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4184481.ece

 

[Edvid]

On uk.railway there are stories of Oyster pads having registered certain foreign smartcards a foot away.