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Safety: phone, cards, scams

How to protect money and your phone in Brazil: a street phone, limits in bank apps, phone insurance, checking the amount on the terminal and scammers' schemes.

The typical risks for newcomers are phone theft in the street, an extra amount charged on a terminal, and offers to "earn" with your own card. Below are protective techniques that residents of Rio de Janeiro write about. This is no guarantee of safety: danger depends on the district and the time of day.

Checked on 8 October 2026. Insurance and bank terms are as of the post date.

In short

  • Carry a "street" phone that you will not mind handing over, and leave your main one at home.
  • Before tapping your card, check the amount on the terminal.
  • Do not give your card details to anyone who offers to "receive money and keep part of it".
  • If you are robbed, hand over what is demanded and do not resist.

A second phone

It is common in Brazil to have two phones: a valuable one at home and a cheap one for the street. The street phone should not hold:

  • anything hard to restore (eSIMs of other countries, originals of documents);
  • apps with access to your main bank accounts, crypto exchanges and main e-mail;
  • passwords, seed phrases and other confidential information.

One or two banking apps such as PicPay or iti Itaú with a small balance for a day or two and a linked virtual card are enough, and it is better to create a separate cloud account on it (post, 15.01.2025, post, 20.02.2025).

Protection in the bank app

  • Modo Rua at Nubank (February 2023): while the phone is not connected to your home Wi-Fi, no more than an amount you set can be spent or transferred (post, 13.02.2023).
  • A temporary virtual card at Nubank lasts 24 hours and suits a dubious website or paying for a friend (post, 04.01.2024).
  • Phone insurance (in December 2023 through the Nubank app): it covers theft or robbery (a boletim de ocorrência is needed), accidental damage, including water damage, and up to R$ 5,000 on the Nubank account if the phone is stolen. It does not cover deliberate damage, loss, or transactions made more than 24 hours after the theft. It starts 30 days after activation and also works abroad. For an iPhone 14 Pro it cost R$ 127 a month with a R$ 770 deductible (post, 08.12.2023).

At the terminal

Check the amount on the terminal's screen before you tap your card or enter the PIN. A channel author reports a case in Rio's south zone (especially Copacabana) where US$ 2,000 was charged instead of US$ 4 (post, 14.08.2026).

Scammers' schemes

  • A "dropper" on your card. In chats people are offered to hand over their card details so that money lands on the card: keep part, withdraw the rest and send it in cryptocurrency. This is stolen money: the card and the account get blocked within a couple of days, it ruins your credit history, and in the worst case you can be charged with complicity in money laundering (post, 18.07.2023).
  • Scammers posing as birth support. See Pregnancy and childbirth.

If you are robbed

Do not play the hero: in one case resisting was answered by a second attacker and a concussion. Hand over what is demanded and carry the minimum of valuables (post, 22.07.2023).

A map of the area

The Fogo Cruzado app shows shooting statistics on a map of Rio and four other states: the number of incidents, casualties and whether it was a police operation. The @russo_no_brasil author also shares a map marking districts controlled by gangs. The completeness and currency of such data depend on the district (post, 12.12.2024, post, 18.02.2025).

Sources

Personal experience (channels @brazil_lifehacks and @russo_no_brasil, in Russian):