They are advertising this Card Block, so that your ID info cannot be scanned by a pedestrian, remotely through your clothing, bag and wallet?!
Is that for real?
Who is advertising? Link?
There are certainly scammers, trying to sell worthless products to gullible people. Nothing unreal about that. Not even very new.
There are a few issues with cards that use near-field RF communications, that allow for some theoretical vulnerabilities. These seem to have been talked up into “OMG, identity theft/fraud at a distance” and then to people selling the equivalent of tin-foil hats for your wallet.
The idea that a person could walk past you with a radio transceiver and use it to interrogate the various RF chips in your wallet/purse is close to fanciful. There are a lot of significant problems, to the least of which is that the signal the perpetrator gets back falls with the fourth order of the distance, and just getting the card to fire up would require currently infeasible power levels.
There are however possible real scams that contact-less payment cards could be used in. Typically they would not simply involve a random person near you, but they could be installed in shops and other places where your wallet is, say, on a counter for a moment or two. Essentially doing nothing more than adding a hidden rear field payment reader that is coupled to a criminal network that is redirecting purchases to your card. It isn’t trivial, requires that the purchase itself go though in the time your card is near the clandestine device, and probably altogether too easy for the scam to be discovered and shut down to make it worth the risk. But it is there.
There have been similar criticisms of the chip used on modern passports. Mostly that the chip is vulnerable to misuse by state level agencies in countries you visit. Some people worry that the chip might be clone-able enough to help facilitate passport forgeries.
So, it is real right now? I don’t think anyone has any evidence that there are active successful exploits. In the future. Like I said, there are theoretical vulnerabilities. They don’t allow ID theft, but they can allow low level fraud.
Would I go out and pay money for a “blocker”. No. They are nothing but a sheet of metal foil. If I were travelling in “interesting” places, I might, just for the peace of mind, look at shielding my wallet. Such vulnerabilities occasionally have a habit of becoming a nuisance worthy of attention.
The real fear at present is that criminals will start doing pay-wave, which is designed to work at distances “up to” around 4cm. With specialist equipment, they may be able to extend that distance even further, and steal money from your credit card. Not happening right now. When you start finding un-authorised transactions on your credit card, then is the time to start worrying about ID theft – which is more complex.
ID theft may become a issue if pay-wave credit theft becomes a real problem. If they steal your fingerprints from your passport, then you have real problem.
Today, it’s not real.
IMHO, the liability and financial exposure for banks issuing this type of card is so large that they would not use the technology unless it was safe and secure.
Just like swipe cards.