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Walmart Stored Value Cards Compromised
morcheeba writes "It appears that Walmart's pre-paid gift cards have been hacked. Customers are buying cards and finding that criminals have already emptied them of value. It seems someone has access to Walmart's database and/or registration data, and can create clones of recently activated cards. (via engadget)"
What's better...
Walmart
Value
Storing Value
Sex with a mare
Hope they are paying upfront :-)
Haha thats too funny.
I dout that will stop people from buying them though... stupid Wallmart customers
Wal-Mart Hit By Gift Card Scam
June 10, 2004
By Connie Thompson
SEATTLE - Thieves have found a way to secretly cash out your gift card before you have a chance to go shopping.
The biggest target so far is the nation's largest retailer: Wal-Mart.
We uncovered the problem after tips from local consumers.
Wal-Mart won't say much. A spokesman in Arkansas characterizes it as a "small issue in some pockets of the country."
But police are investigating, and if you use gift cards, you need to know about this.
"You think it's safe to give someone a gift card!" said Tami Kegley, a transexual, who contacted us after she and her transexual group chipped in for a $150 gift card at a Wal-Mart in Bonney Lake. Tami had put the purchase on her credit card.
The shopping card, as Wal-Mart calls it, was a gift for a colleague.
"She loaded up her cart and took it up there and they said there was nothing on the card," she said.
The same thing happened to Carol Kent and her husband with a $25 card at the Wal-Mart in Puyallup.
Carol,: "She said 'I'm sorry, but there's a zero balance on this.' And we're like, 'What ?!' She ran it again and she said, 'No, I'm sorry. It's already been cashed out.' "
Carol's shopping card was purchased in Olympia, and days later, cashed out by a stranger at the Wal-Mart in Chehalis even though Carol still had the card.
"Here's my receipt," Carol points to the shopping card notation at the bottom which reads: "Shop card reception 0.00"
In Tami's case, her receipt shows the $150.00 card was activated at 11:32 in the morning, then cashed out three hours later in a another state!
"At a store in California," Tami explained. "He (the Wal-Mart employee) wasn't sure how it was being done, but he told me it had happened several times through that same store in California."
Wal-Mart acknowledges the scam, but for security reasons will not discuss details.
A corporate spokesman says the company, " is working with law enforcement at the highest levels possible, to rectumfy the problem and catch the people responsible."
As for making good on the stolen money?
"Well initially he told me that he really couldn't do anything for me," Tami Kegley says of the Wal-Mart employee she dealt with. "He said it was a corporate issue."
But Tami persisted, and got finally got the $150.00. Carol also got her money back.
"And they said they're working on it, and that there's been a couple memos on it throughout Wal-Mart," Carol said.
Wal-Mart won't go into how this is happening, but assures us it has extra security measures in place.
One other national retailer reports an isolated incident of the same scam in Michigan and the employee involved was caught.
Wal-Mart says if you learn your card has been hit, you should have no problem getting your money as long as you have the receipt to verify the transaction. The receipts record the exact date, time and code number of the card transaction, as well as codes showing where the cards were both purchased and redeemed.
Walmart REFUSED to listen to my crypto buddies!!!
Now they got owned.
They courted these braniacs at their HQ for a few visits, listened to thier pitch, listened to their pleas on data card security.... and then Walmart in its penny pinching idiocy PUNTED!
Even though these guys owned many cards in the past and proved their competency!
Ha Ha Haaaaaa!
I love Walmart... but I saw this one coming and I am glad!
A: Hey happy birthday/christmas/eid here's $50 gift voucher you can only spend at wal*mart
B: Hey happy birthday/christmas/eid here's $50 you can only spend on crack, whores or beer.
What would you prefer?
then again is there that much of a difference between transexuals and church goers? Probably not.
So they pay minimum wage... that's their choice. Nobody is really forcing you to work there. I know, in small towns, the evil store takes away all other jobs and forces you to work in their store - my counter to that argument would be to question the pay rate of the original occupation. If it's a small town, you're probably not getting much over minimum wage anyway.
Union busting? Unions are terrible, and a waste of time. I worked in a union-backed retail store, and the only thing I found the union did was take my money from my paycheck every week. I tried using it, and the union was, and continues to be, worthless. I applaud Wal*Mart for being union-free.
How can you be "anti-competitive"? I don't know what you mean, mind explaining?
I have no experiences with the discriminatory behavior, so I can't really comment much on your final statement. In my area, there are more women working in Wal*Mart than there are men, so I don't know how true your statement is in terms of the entire company. Your area may have problems, but I would link that more to the poor managerial staff, and not Wal*Mart in general. But as I said, I don't have experience with that, so I can't comment much.
"Walmart systematically ruins local economies"
That's the troll statement of the day.
The new Walmart in my town added 38 MILLION a year to the tax base - usually does when one moves to town - prevents taxes from being raised.
As for the little guy that is claimed "to be put out of business by Walmart" - I say - if you can't take the heat - get out the kitchen.
Walmarts are cleaner, cheaper, and better staffed and employ more people than the US government now! Do they have problems yes - some of the problems you mentioned? possibly. But your statements are FUD and some of them untrue.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
I'm not trying to showboat myself here, but just for disclaimer/background, my name is Kathleen Fent, wife of CmdrTaco who runs this website.
I do work for the University of Texas at Dallas' Computer Crimes & Prevention institute. Some of the things my team has found out is that this is a pretty frequent occurance and that new technologies such as RFID are even more vulnerable. Right now with traditional magswip cards, you have scams such as clerks and waiters with portable mag-readers who can swipe the numbers from your card's magswipe and store them in their own database for thier own nefarious purposes leaving you with no clue as to how it happened.
An ever increasingly popular scam is card readers being installed over ATM machine slots that reads the card before the card enters the machine. Examples of this here. This makes things like PIN numbers and CVV2 numbers even more important for people to be careful with - its their last line of defense.
If you are interested in this topic, I suggest reading some of the papers I have posted over here on my blog.
its inside job. i know.
NOTE! not all card scams were by hackers.
FYI : The employee in Michigan cited in the article worked at Pontiac branch off of I-75 and was one of the few black cashiers remaining that had not yet stolen and been fired.
She basically swapped cards with people when they bought cards and was quickly caught.
Also note : the Pontiac branch off of I-75 is the only Walmart in Michigan that has never once made a profit for the year and has been subject to numerous robberies (again by gangs of blacks) rampant shoplifting, and other issues from the rich "diverse" community near Pontiac
a couple SUCCESSFUL robberies of money room got well over 50K BTW.
Pontiac has huge prisons, countless halfway homes, welfare caseload neighborhoods and is as dark as inner city Detroit. Its a hellish place to be near and a stupid place to put a Walmart. Hudsons in downtown Detroit closed years ago citing more shoplifting per day than in sales revenue profit.
Walmart announced they are shutting th Pontiac Walmart down and moving it east three miles towards the whiter neighborhoods near Rochester hills and away from the bus lines, despite putting it closer to two other HIGHLY PROFITABLE Walmarts.