First off, let me start by providing a link to a Symbian^3 binary for MagRead. It can be found here. See the bottom of this post for some more details on this.
I’ve previously shown screenshots of MagRead running in Maemo on the N900 device. This post will feature some pictures of MagRead on Symbian^3 using a Nokia C7 device. At the bottom is a link to the program for Symbian, so those of you with a dongle can try it yourself.
The application has now been tested on the Nokia C7 and Nokia N8 phones.
First up is the intro screen:
It’s rather simple at the moment, but intended to not overly clutter the interface. More than just screenshots, here’s a picture of this on the Nokia C7:
Now with the program actually running. Here’s a screenshot of it having read an American Express card, followed by a picture of the C7 and the card next to it:
The picture shows the application reoriented into landscape mode, where it changes the layout slightly to better fit the new screen resolution.
When a card that is expired is swiped, MagRead also notes it by printing the expiration date in red:
In addition to credit cards, MagRead is also able to parse cards that comply with AAMVA standard — that is, identification/driver licence cards from the US and Canada that have magnetic stripes. Here is my California driver licence:
For anything other than a credit card or AAMVA-compliant card, MagRead will simply show the data as it is written on the card. Here’s an example using a membership card:
The last big feature of MagRead in its current state is the ability to show partial reads. This is when a part of the stream can be decoded, but it fails one or more checksums. Here’s the Visa card from above with a failed swipe, showing most of the data stored on the stripe:
The red character indicates that a checksum failed there. Any characters to the right of a failed checksum may also be invalid. Nonetheless, this swipe shows the complete card number and its expiration date (in YYMM format after the field separator).
Note that all credit card numbers shown are in fact invalid. The cards are old ones that had been compromised, and the numbers reissued.
I am now able to offer a self-signed package for MagRead. It can be found here. The package is version 0.1.3 (or 0.1(3), as shown in Symbian), and is the one demonstrated above.
There will be a security warning when installing, noting that it is not from a trusted source. Additionally, you’ll be asked to authorize the application to access the “camera or microphone”. This is required in order to record from the audio dongle (the camera is not touched). Those who don’t wish to trust me can use the Nokia Qt SDK to build the application from source themselves, and verify that what they’re installing does nothing malicious.
No information read by MagRead is ever saved onto the device or transferred over the network. Once it disappears from the screen, it’s gone. I will not be offering any application that doesn’t follow this principle.