Bound to happen. The article says for fraud purposes, the bad guy would have to get very close. Wouldn't surprise me if they just built hand-held readers "illegally" modified with higher power output....
That's doing it the hard way.
Just build one that fits in your pocket and walk past the line of shoppers at the register on the way out of your local Wally-World. Grab all the information in one swell foop.
'Course, you still got to find a way to run that information through the system to make the charges.
Perhaps an underpaid clerk or a not-very-honest store owner?
You mean with a more sensitive receiver, to get the card's signal from further away. This would be easy to do. The commercial reader necessarily has to be cheap to produce, compact, and rugged.
You can get something a LOT more sensitive in a briefcase if you choose to spend some bucks. Then you just move through the crowd, bringing the briefcase close to peoples wallet-pockets or purses