ESB eCar Problem.

godtabh

I commute to work via train every couple of weeks. Some times I charge the car some times I don’t.

Today I didn’t and wasn’t parked near a charger.

You can imagine my shock when I got a notification that charging had started.

Any idea how this would happen? €5 charged before I even noticed.

Don’t think there is any issue with my phone. The card was in the centre console and could be seen from car. Car was locked.

rang ESB and had card cancelled

Any idea?

the_amazing_raisin

Well the card is just an RFID card, and there's always warnings about thieves using scanners to copy the details of the cards in your wallet

Never been convinced it was much of a threat against a credit card, but something with simpler security would be vulnerable

So you could copy the card and use it to start a charger nearby

Not exactly a criminal mastermind though, you'd know exactly where the car they were charging was and there's probably some CCTV cameras nearby that could catch the reg plate

zg3409

It may be a mix up on ecars side. For example the card reader on a unit read a slightly wrong card number. Was the charging at the same site or elsewhere?

10-10-20

Ask eCars whether the charge was specifically started by their card or by the app, or otherwise, and was it started specifically on that charger in the train station?

RFID has a very short range so the chance that it was cloned or transmitted while sitting in your car would be very very low.

MojoMaker

I've had this before with eCars. Was basically a sorting issue on the main eCars platform.

My car allegedly commenced a charge in Carlow Town while I was clearly in Dublin for the day. I had been to Carlow the week prior and used a charger, so the excuse from the customer support line was basically an Excel (or equivalent) sorting algorithm glitch. A couple of euro refunded to me fairly quickly.

Bad breach of information security but I didn't pursue it.