Criminal Use Of Camera Phones?

from the more-to-fear dept

More paranoia over the misuse of camera phones. Found over at picturephoning.com is this story describing how a criminal might take a photo of your credit card and signature while you’re paying for something at a store. I’m just curious if this has actually happened to anyone. The article claims that camera phones have “increased identity theft crimes by as much as 20 percent,” though they don’t describe how they came up (or how they measure) such a finding. While I don’t deny that it’s possible, it certainly seems like (a) a fairly inefficient process for identity theft and (b) has an increasingly high likelihood of getting caught. I would bet that there are much bigger identity theft threats out there than the guy behind you in line at the grocery store. Update: Thanks to Director Mitch for agreeing to be a guinea pig on this one. He took out a credit card and his camera phone, took a picture of his credit card from three feet away and posted the image to his website. Go ahead and start buying stuff online.


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Comments on “Criminal Use Of Camera Phones?”

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5 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Idiotic Claim

What sort of resolution are you talking about? Have these idiots used a camera phone? You can hardly tell sometimes who FACE is in the piture, so the claim to capture any financial data from more than a few inches away is simply stupid.

Even with larger resolution cameras down the pike, just memorizing 14 digits ain’t that hard and just looking over your shoulder is easier (or having the teller steal it, or getting a copy of your receit, etc., etc., etc.)

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