A security firm has found that the charging cards used by electric car owners are wide open to fraud, public broadcaster NOS reports.

The cards are extremely easy to copy and owners could find themselves footing the bill for other people’s electric kilometres, Dave Maasland of security firm ESET told the broadcaster.

All would-be fraudsters need is the digital number on the card which can be read using an app on a smartphone. That is then copied onto a blank card in a matter of seconds, Maasland explained. ‘It’s as if you could go shopping with someone’s pin card needing only his bank account number,’ he said.

All 50,000 loading stations in the Netherlands use the same system and could therefore be open to this kind of fraud, the broadcaster said. However, no cases have so far been reported.

Card producer NewMotion commented that the chances of this type of fraud occurring were ‘small’ and if it did happen the legitimate card owner would not have to pay.

Fastned, which manages a network of motorway loading stations, admitted its cards ’do not have the best security’.

‘But we do monitor deviant activity,’ spokesman Niels Korthals Altes told NOS. ‘We also assume that fraudsters will not go unpunished. We have cameras at the loading stations and anyone using someone else’s data can be tracked down by means of the car registration number.’