Have you ever wondered how a retailer can leave a Bluetooth skimmer on a payment card terminal in its stores for weeks at a time? It’s harder to detect the devices than you might think, because crooks have their own places to shop for spare parts that snap right on a payment terminal and are hard to spot if you aren’t looking for them. [More]
payment terminals
Retailers Have Chip-Enabled Card Readers, Aren’t Actually Turning Them On
By 2.16.16
If you’ve received a shiny new chip-enabled card from your bank or credit card company in recent months, then you’ve probably been through this at least once. You see that a store has the slot for your card, so you assume that the store actually accepts them. Silly shopper! The terminal tells you to swipe the magnetic stripe instead. [More]
What Does A Grocery Store PIN Pad Skimmer Look Like?
By 2.3.16
Have you ever wondered how customers could slide their cards through and enter their PINs on a compromised payment terminal without even noticing? While some skimming schemes involve Bluetooth transmitters and require disassembling the device, installing a skimmer can be as simple as snapping an identical part over an existing card reader. [More]
Safeway Says No Payment Data Stolen From California Stores, Only Colorado
By 12.17.15
There’s potential good news out of Safeway: while the company confirmed that they found skimmers in credit card payment terminals in two states, a spokesperson says that the baddies didn’t harvest any customer data from the stores in California. Instead, the grocer found them back in September while inspecting terminals. While it’s good news that customers didn’t walk up to an ATM only to find their bank accounts drained, it’s still worrisome that someone was able to install the skimmers in the first place. [More]
Card Skimmers Found Inside Payment Terminals In California And Colorado Safeway Stores
By 12.16.15
Regular Consumerist readers are probably now used to checking gas pumps, kiosks, and ATMs for visible and obvious skimming devices. However, banks have discovered and Safeway has confirmed that credit card terminals in some of their stores in California and Colorado were compromised with hardware skimmers: devices embedded right in the card-processing machines that harvested their card data and PINs. [More]
