In message , at
01:49:42 on Wed, 1 Sep 2004, Neill Wood
remarked:
A thought has occured to me while reading this thread. People get on
buses and swipe their Oyster cards without removing them from the
wallet. Is there any indictation apart from the bleep to the driver
that the card is genuine? If you were to have a fake card you can just
pass it in front of the reader and get on free. If the driver is busy
or there is a lot of noise he's got going to hear the bleep. If an
inspector gets on, do you only have to flash you card at him? Have I
uncovered a major fraud possibility here?

The Nottingham City busses have an Oyster-like card, and readers by the
driver. They only sell 7-day, 30-day and annual "travelcards" though,
not prepay. You could get past some drivers with a card and a separate
"beeper", but there's a big green light on the side of the reader that
flashes too.

The conductors on the Trams, however, never read the cards[1], and just
showing them a card (which could easily have expired) is good enough.

[1] They have a gadget that prints tickets, not sure if it has the
capability to read the cards.
--
Roland Perry