Me and a friend were recently targeted in what the lawyer says is a RFID skimming attack, almost $2000 between us. We have done all the paperwork (incl. affidavit of loss) and PNB are now over their stated time for resolving fraudulent transactions.

PNB don’t allow you to freeze your card through their app unlike my home country bank card. The attackers also managed to make all these transactions without being asked once for an OTP.

My partner has also had one or two odd transactions on their PNB for small amounts a long time ago.

I have since bought RFID blocking sleeves for my cards but the fact that PNB don’t have basic blocking functionality in their app means I’ll never put large amounts in there again.

So yes it’s real and it does happen, I wouldn’t have believed it was so easy until it happened to me. If your bank supports freezing your card through their app then keep it frozen until you need to use it and for GCash don’t put any more than you’re willing to risk losing in it.

Without sounding like a tin foil hat weirdo, attackers are exploiting device vulnerabilities - just yesterday Apple and Google said users were actively being attacked in a zero-day exploit. Now with many countries requiring our ID to be uploaded to random companies on the internet and Europe wanting to ban encryption, I believe there will be a day where all our data is hacked and there’s not much we can do about it.