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Criminals Hide Payment-Card Skimmers In Gas Pumps
tugfoigel writes "A wave of recent bank-card skimming incidents demonstrate how sophisticated the scam has become. Criminals hid bank card-skimming devices inside gas pumps — in at least one case, even completely replacing the front panel of a pump — in a recent wave of attacks that demonstrate a more sophisticated, insidious method of stealing money from unsuspecting victims filling up their gas tanks. Some 180 gas stations in Utah, from Salt Lake City to Provo, were reportedly found with these skimming devices sitting inside the gas pumps. The scam was first discovered when a California bank's fraud department discovered that multiple bank card victims reporting problems had all used the same gas pump at a 7-Eleven store in Utah."
How do I protect myself from a skimmer inside a gas pump?
Pay cash inside.
I remember atleast 10 years ago at an Arco station had a sticker on the machine that said don't enter in your card if the reader looks wierd. I have also seen that warning on swipe ATMs.
The new part is that the reader does NOT look weird.
It looks physically identical to the standard reader.
Didja even read the summary?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Ride 50 miles one way to work on your bicycle.
Not too hard, I'd only need to do it once before my boss fires me for being 4 hours late.
And yeah maybe it is an inside job. Paying clerks $6.00 an hour to work from midnight to 8:00AM does not buy a lot of loyalty. Where do you think most of the pilfered credit card numbers really come from? Try paying people a living wage and this won't happen. Employees who have to live with their mother are not adverse to listening to some ones criminal scheme, which to them sounds like justice rendered.
Why do "Al Qaeda" bulletins allegedly authored by Osama Bin Laden sound as if they were authored by Oliver North?
Let's define this scenario clearly. You put your money in a bank. The bank then gives you access to the bank's services. It's not access to "your" money so much as it is access to a money exchange service. (Think of an ATM and similar services as a vending machine that serves up cash and other things in exchange for the money in your bank account.)
Now there are the criminal parties. These parties are the ones who come in and exploit weaknesses in the system to get cash and other things. In the course of exploiting these weaknesses, they use the credentials of other people to extract the cash and other things from the actual victims.
Who are the actual victims? They are the banks themselves and they are the sellers of other things.
When the people whose credentials were used in the commission of a crime against the banks and merchants are charged with responsibility for the criminal acts, it is the banks and merchants who are victimizing the people... their customers! The criminal performed their crimes against the banks and merchants. It is the banks and merchants who are passing the burden along to the innocent individuals who quite literally have no way to protect or control the situation. It is the banks and merchants who have the means to control and protect.
Every time I hear "identity theft" and other referrals of uninvolved parties as victims of a crime, the lie bothers me. These banks and merchants have created a system that is weak and exploitable that uses its customers as a buffer and even a shield against those weaknesses. You cannot protect your "secret information" so long as it must be shared in order to use it. And once that information is out there and used, the banks and merchants take money from your account instead of theirs. The original victims are, in turn, victimizing the innocent by declaring that the innocents are victims of the original crime.
I am sure there are plenty of people who disagree with my sentiments on the matter. But if you do, point out the flaw in the logic I presented.
If you have a pair of sunglasses and a jacket, you should be good to go.
1: Get a $10-$25 cash card from your credit card company
2: Slide it through the card reader
3: Light up a cigarette
4: Spray gas all over the pump
5: Slowly walk away, flicking the smouldering cigarette behind you, onto the pump. Speak a one-liner about gas, pumps, explosions, fire, smoking, or credit card fraud. It is very important NOT to laugh at your own joke.
6: No matter how hot your back suddenly gets, keep walking slowly and DON'T turn around, (glass or shrapnel is going to hit you, it's better to take it in the back than in the face.)
7: Never worry about gas pump skimmers for the rest of your life.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
After waiting patiently for the US Government to implement a carbon tax, the ever-altruistic Utah mafia has decided to take matters into their own hands.
We oldsters in the 1970's used to skim gas out of the gas tank. Some of the more ballsier-types would steal whole gas tankers. The fact that you can skim debit cards at the gas pump without spilling gas on yourself is a great technological improvement since you don't have to resell the gas.
You seem confused. The skimmer is entirely parallel to the regular reader, it does not effect the operation of the pump.
There will be no observable difference in the transaction.
The most secure remedy is cash.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
How do I protect myself from a skimmer inside a gas pump?
Or use a bike. Better for you and the environment too at the same time.
Okay, that's one problem avoided. So then how would one protect themselves from a skimmer on any other type of card reader, like at an ATM, vending machine, or a gas pump since no, you can't always just bike everywhere.
Ok, on a serious note about the problem. How to figure out a solution to this problem. Issue is, there isn't a simple answer.
Some might say we just need more education on the subject. But lets be honest. That won't work, never has, never will. People have been told that about everything from health (eat less processed/junk food, exercise more, ect... and as there are more people obese today then ever shows how well that works), to drugs (I've heard of the problems with things like crack since the 80's when I was born, and it's still being used today), to the basics of never share passwords but these things still happen.
Others might say we need more surveillance with cameras and police. But this isn't working either with Britain having millions of CCTV and also being the most violent country in Europe ( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html ). So this is also not a solution.
Other things need to be taken into consideration. Why are these happening? People are need money more then before with a lack of jobs due to the recession. Also the ease of availability of these problems (these machines are showing up in more and more places). Also a lack of security in these newer forms of payment that are shown to be insecure ( http://tv.boingboing.net/2008/03/19/how-to-hack-an-rfide.html ) yet still forced upon the consumer due to the millions funded into these technologies and the fear of admitting these losses to shareholders.
Many of these company's and people are no doubt hoping things like DMCA laws and their inclusion into global laws like the ACTA will help get rid of the problems since it will make the technology illegal (these break digital security locks). Thing is, again it won't work. Drug growers have shown that when these problems come about, people will just go underground and look for other ways to do this. This was shown during the Regan years of the war against drugs. As time passed, it was harder to smuggle weed from places like Afghanistan, so people started shipping hash. Same type of drug but smaller and easier to ship. After that came hash oil since it was again smaller and the law started to figure out about hash. When hash oil was found out, people started to look into hydroponics (a new growing method for plants of ANY kind) and found they could grow a better crop (better watered, feed, controlled, ect...) in the country bypassing the issue of smuggling it in.And just like pot dealers/growers showed that the law means little in the end to get what they want, same will happen with this and as with every crime in history.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,