Redbox rents DVD movies via vending machine in drugstores and supermarkets throughout the country, and on Friday they announced that they’d found credit card skimmers attached to three of their kiosks. What’s surprising is that they ‘fessed up so quickly, and in a highly public manner—they’ve got the text “SECURITY ALERT” at the top and bottom of their website, and the email they sent to their members is detailed, forthright, and helpful, and reposted in its entirety—along with photos of sample card skimmers—on their site. Attempts at identity theft no longer surprise us, but a competent handling of the issue by a company is pretty amazing.
One reader, Meiran, put it this way: “I’m rather impressed by their reaction, it seems like most modern companies would attempt to push this under the rug and pretend it didn’t happen, leaving customers to wonder what those strange charges on their statements are.”
According to Wikipedia, the company is mostly owned by McDonald’s and Coinstar, so it’s not like this is an example of a start-up that’s never encountered the heavy hand of corporate influence. This means Redbox’s board of directors intentionally chose to be proactive on the matter. They seem to have figured out something that lots of other companies still struggle with, which is that if you empower your customers to help protect themselves, they’ll help protect you, too. We wouldn’t be surprised if the next time a skimmer is detected, the alert comes from a customer who remembers Redbox’s email.
“Redbox Security Alert – Credit Card Skimmer Attempt” [redbox](Thanks to everyone who sent this in!)
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@forgottenpassword: You can keep the movie for as long as you like, it just costs $1 a day after the first day if you’re using a free code.
And if you keep it long enough they tell you “You know what? Just keep it.” I think it’s 25 days for that.
I like combining Redbox with my Netflix subscription. New releases? Redbox. Netflix is for old movies and tv shows (I currently have Roman Holiday and a disc of Monk on their way to me). Putting the two together is pretty cheap and has worked perfectly so far.
Redbox is great. Coupon codes, $1 rentals, it makes the stuff my girlfriend wants me to watch with her almost painless. There’s also 5 machines within 3 miles of me, and a 24 hour accessible machine a couple miles farther on for those late-night cravings. I bemoan the removal of a Hollywood Video machine at the local grocery warehouse, but I could never find codes for it. It had a larger selection that stretched back a few years, though, and when a sequel came out, they would drop copies of the original movies in too. Now it’s a Redbox, oh well.
@Sys Admn: Bingo. I always figured that McDonalds had some sort of agreement with Redbox. The boxes pull in traffic to the restaurants. It’d be interesting to see the stats of people make food purchases with their DVD rentals (or vice versa). It makes sense that McD’s owns them.
People that pay for rentals subsidize my free rentals, just like people that pay credit card interest pay my cashback rebate. I remember reading something on the InsideRedbox site that Redbox knows of the code listing and that they’re ok with it; even like it. It’s cheap advertising for them. They could easily crack down on the promo codes if they wanted to.
@SpenceMan01:
THANKS! That site is very nifty and is getting added to faves immediately!
Redbox has been in my area (Indiana) for about a year. They work best in teams since you can return movies to any box the selection gets shifted around a bit since no two boxes in my area have all the same movies. They are outside McDonald’s and in the Marsh grocery stores. Kroger has some other brand of rental box but since I can’t reserve online I’ve never used it.
@SpenceMan01: “People that pay for rentals subsidize my free rentals”
What about the people who pay rentals who don’t want to subsidize your free rentals? I know I’d much rather pass.
Redbox offers enough codes themselves, there’s no reason to be subversive about it at all. I get a free code once a week, as I mentioned. Wouldn’t it be easier and nicer to go through them?
To reinforce the earlier point: The headline of this article is incorrect and irresponsible.
This series of incidents does not represent a RedBox data breach in any possible meaning of the phrase. That would be like calling a fake red kettle a theft perpetrated by the Salvation Army, or accusing the U.S. Mint of being behind counterfeiting of our currency.
RedBox discovered criminals using their kiosks to commit a crime. They, responsibly, notified the people most at risk of being “taken” by the skimmers–their custoemrs.