Do you know what is a RF EAS system works or how it works? I don’t. All I can tell you what is stands for- Electronic Article Surveillance that uses Radio-frequency. Still not sure what that thing is? :) It’s the thing that you may have seen at the checkout point/ exit point of a shopping mall. Those big bars that detect whether anybody is passing through without paying for the product. Used as Anti-Shoplifting device. May be the following picture would help visualizing what i’m talking about.
If you are interested how RF EAS system works- read this article from howthingsworks.com. They have explained the system including different variation of the system.
Ok, now we get a visual idea what i’m talking about. Why i’m talking about it? for that i need to share a story with you all.
I was in a shopping mall, walking around, passing the time while my better half was shopping. I was on my phone with ebay app. Browsing for some cell phone, using the buy it now option. I was walking around, going in and out, looking at the search results on ebay app. You people have seen people texting and walking and fall into fountain or in awkward situations. I was kind of like that. I was paying more attention to my ebay and less where i’m heading to. I nearly bumped into one of those EAS RF bars. I stopped. Still was looking at the screen. Then I saw the most interesting thing. All on a sudden something as added to my cart. I didn't even touch anything. I did not do anything and it was adding/ creating touch effect on my ebay app and adding item to my ebay cart! And, it did not stop there, it even tried to buy the thing. I was so lucky that I did not have the payment method setup on my cell phone. That saved me buying a $250 worth of cell phone that I did not wanted/ submitted.
First I would like to rule out the possible hacking issue. I was not connected to shopping mall wifi and my NFC settings was off. What actually happened, I don't know. All I know, when I was close to one of those bar (possibly the transmitter), it sent some electromagnetic wave (which I was kind of feeling it when I was moving the phone around the bar). I was near to the top portion of the bar. It did not happen at the lower level.
When it happened first time, I did not believe it. Then I tried few other times, it did the same thing. May be it is nothing abnormal to people who has enough knowledge about the whole system, to me, as a layman, all I saw it adding stuff to my cart and tried to buy it. It could be related to cell phone having the capacitive touch screen and that electromagnetic field generated the pulse to mimic the touch behavior.
I tried few other thing, tried from the lock screen- nothing happened, tried from the home screen- nothing, went to app menu screen and then it started the facebook app. Could have tried few more things and was trying to take a video of this, ended up being questioned by the security guards.
I was wondering about whole thing. How would I ever test scenarios that may happen in real world. There are n number of user scenarios in real life. All I could do think about some of them and test my product. Testing is my passion, so I try to think and share about the events in my QA professional life. I dont want to be just a Tester but a real life Tester.
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