Anime conventions can be so much fun, but you must be aware of your surroundings and watch out for annoying and possibly dangerous scams. There are card readers that can read your bank card through your bag.
These scammers take advantage of conventions where everyone is most likely with a bank card. Their technique is to only take a couple pounds, but they go around and do that to many cosplayers and over time those couple of pounds turns into a large sum. They take your money by taping a contactless card reader lightly on your bag, or on your purse and it reads your information through the material.
Many anime conventions are becoming more and more contactless card friendly, so they are a big target for scammers. A user on TikTok (@sketchyraven) said, “someone stole my card information this way at Fanime [crying emoji]”, (Fanime is in the United States of America).
Since anime conventions are so full of people, and usually there is a lot going on, your attention to detail may be distracted and you may not even notice a notification that a payment has been taken, which is another reason these places are such a big place for scams.
A way to avoid this to happen to you is to get a blackout card, its something you could slip into your wallet, and it blocks any contactless payments from being taken without your say. There are also contactless blocking sleeves for credit or debit cards which won’t let any payments to go through unless you take your card out of the sleeve. There are even wallets that are designed to block this from happening. Stay safe!
By Katie, Yr9
Boston High School Newsroom
Well written article, it is important to look after your personal data, especially your financial info.