More Gas Station Credit-Card Skimmers

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday July 13, 2010 @08:51AM from the look-for-the-guy-with-the-blue-tooth dept.

coondoggie notes a Network World piece on credit-card skimmers found installed in gas pumps, this time in Florida. Like the similar wave of attacks in Utah earlier this year, the latest crop uses Bluetooth to transmit the illicitly collected data. Does this mean an accomplice has to hang around within 3m of the pump? "The Secret Service has indicated there's a crime wave throughout the Southeast involving the gas-station pump card skimmers, and it may be traced back to a single gang that may be working out of Miami... St. Johns County in Florida has also been hit by the gas-pump card skimmers. [A local sheriff's department spokesman] says criminals wanting to hide the credit-card skimmers in gas pumps have to have a key to the pump, but in some cases a single key will serve to get into many gas pumps." Here's an insight from the banking industry on the skimming fraud.

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Re:Get the chip by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2010-07-13 09:35 · Score: 5, Insightful

There is one unpleasant downside to "chip & PIN"...

While it is certainly more secure than mag stripe, the various issuing institutions, at least in Britain, have tried to use this to argue that theft/skimming losses should now be the fault of the "negligent" customer, rather than their problem.

I have nothing against better security, I do have a problem with better security being tarted up as evidence that no intrusion could possibly have occurred without the connivance of the customer.