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New Laws: You Can't Find Out About Credit Card Skimmers

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By atomheartbevo
in Daily Texan

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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89709

Posted
Posted (edited)

https://www.click2houston.com/2019/09/23/heres-why-you-can-no-longer-see-locations-where-police-have-found-skimmers/

"A new state law to crack down on skimmers just went into effect this month; but with it, consumers lost access to some valuable information. House Bill 2945 says we can no longer find out where law enforcement agencies are finding the devices that steal our credit card data."

"Law enforcement is no longer allowed to share the names of businesses where officers found skimmers except to report the information to the AG, other law enforcement agencies, the payment fraud fusion center and any financial institution that may be impacted."

"According to Perez’s chief of staff, lawmakers made the concession to the food and fuel lobby that represents gas stations in exchange for their support of the bill.

When regulators like the Texas Department of Agriculture have released the names of businesses where they found skimmers in the past, the business owners say they lost customers for weeks and months afterward, even though the skimmers were removed."

"Investigators said calling out gas stations that are also victims of the financial crime isn't always fair. They need gas stations to work with law enforcement. When owners are worried they’ll be put on blast for self-reporting devices they found, they will be less likely to do so for fear of losing business. "

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It isn't always fair to put this businesses on blast, so that people can find out if their CC may have been affected?  Fuck that.  Secure your machines and you don't have to worry about your shit getting put on blast on the evening news.

Edited by atomheartbevo
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Guest Lobo

Guest Lobo

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Posted

Half the places they find these things, some night shift clerk was in on the installation.  He conveniently looks the other way while they install these things and he gets a cut of the skim.  

I get it's unfair to drag some innocent mom n' pop shop through the ringer because they can't afford a sophisticated surveillance system to see who is putting these on their pumps.  But literally half the time, somebody at the gas station convenience store is on it.  But as usual, we'll treat the symptoms and not the illness.  

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Guest Lobo

Guest Lobo

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If one of you tech savvy surlyhorns hasn't developed some app or some sub-feature on nextdoor or someshit like that that simply lists where skimmers have been found and is shared peer-to-peer, you're doing it wrong.  I realize the AG, and maybe now even the media can't share, but once you find out about one either by having your CC stolen or reliably hearing it from someone who did...there's no law (yet) that says we can't just push that information out there amongst one another as private citizens with dire concerns over identity theft.  Like that app "AroundMe' or others like it.  I use that when traveling just to find a drug store or gas station near a hotel.  Couldn't you add a feature that shares "this store has recently had cc skimmers discovered.  They started on 2/1 and removed on 2/10.  If you were a victim of this, please contact 555-5555."  Why can't we do something like that?  The shit's already on google anyway.  

(nm-I hit "post) and Apep was already ahead of me.)   

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Nice Guy Eddie

Nice Guy Eddie 13515

Posted
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16 minutes ago, Apep said:

Who cares? The stations will still get blasted on Nextdoor and Facebook and will still lose local business. This primarily affects frequent travelers. Maybe someone should make an app?

How can you trust what you see on NextDoor or FB?  I have read a few people blame the local gas station because they have theft on their card. How in the world do you know that the gas station had a skimmer based on that limited information.

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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89709

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22 minutes ago, immortal13 said:

The bottom line is that police reports are public fucking record.....supposed to be anyway.

This.  Should be no problem with FOIA requests to local and state records that are not national security concerns.

But it is Texas, and our state does a lot of stupid shit, and fights a lot of records requests that they shouldn't, all the while wasting taxpayer money on court costs.

Let's hope that the City of Austin doesn't get it in their heads to stop releasing crime reports, because they don't want to harm certain touristy areas.

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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89709

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33 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

How can you trust what you see on NextDoor or FB?  I have read a few people blame the local gas station because they have theft on their card. How in the world do you know that the gas station had a skimmer based on that limited information.

No kidding.  I see a lot of insane shit on Nextdoor, and don't get me started on Facebook.  Nextdoor is full of far too busybodies losing their shit because a minority walked through their neighborhood, or they think that just because a park has a shit-ton of "KEEP YOUR DOG ON A LEASH" signs, that it actually means it's a fucking dog park, and that somehow, in the loosely constructed realities that exist in their heads, dogs have the same rights as human children.

Dipshit dog owners on Nextdoor like to try and put your shit on blast when you kick their dog in the head, when their 40-pound dog runs up out of nowhere at your 30-pound daughter, and they claim the dog was just friendly and wanting to play, and you point out the fucking leash sign that's 15 feet away from us and in plain view, and somebody on Nextdoor that you know tells you they are trying to put your shit on blast, and so you have to hop on there, respond that you have video from another person, as well multiple witnesses, and that you're going to talk to the police now that the dog owner identified themselves, and all of the sudden that dipshit dog owner claims it was just a misunderstanding or something.

Whoops, sorry for the rant.

Also, some people on Nextdoor do not like certain gas stations because they attract the wrong elements (high school kids, etc.), so yeah, I wouldn't trust them at all.

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Guest Lobo

Guest Lobo

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Problem with FOIA is it takes longer than it does to resolve your stolen CC issues.  In this day and age, we need something faster as conmen move from place to place too quickly.  

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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89709

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1 minute ago, Lobo said:

Problem with FOIA is it takes longer than it does to resolve your stolen CC issues.  In this day and age, we need something faster as conmen move from place to place too quickly.  

And honestly, given how much theft there is (I've had both ID and credit card theft), it makes more sense for people to be informed in the here and now so they can start monitoring, instead of down the road when they may not be able to figure it out.  I get thatfinancial institutions are informed and are silently monitoring the affected CC cards, but it's still annoying.

Yeah, these businesses get hurt if word gets out, but almost all of them, once the dust settles, are back to business within a few weeks.  Our neighborhood Shell station (our only neighborhood gas station), if they got hit with skimmers, everybody would be back in a few days after the skimmers were gone, or they'd be back the next day and paying cash.  No different than if there was some kind of deadly fight in the parking lot that spooked people (like say a couple of manservants went at it because one got the last bottle of a certain kind of wine (our station sells a lot of wine) and the other didn't want to go back to their employer empty-handed).

But seriously, security cameras are cheap as shit these days.   And an employee should be checking the pumps every hour or so as it is, even if there wasn't the problem of CC skimmers.

Shit, Amazon sells a 4-pack of fake security cameras with blinking red LEDs for $20.  That alone would give plenty of skimmers a pause.

Unless, like you said, one of the employees is in on it.

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scottsins

scottsins 1967

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Posted
The bottom line is that police reports are public fucking record.....supposed to be anyway.


They are not public record for any ongoing cases. You can go request one from the PD, and you will get a one sentence summary.

Hell, until the Morton Act, defense attorneys didn’t have a true legal right to read/copy offense reports.
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Captainant

Captainant 27680

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Posted

What if I told you that any transaction on a pump without a chip reader is inherently insecure? 

Visa says that hackers are exploiting a weakness in the point-of-sale (POS) networks gas stations use. The hackers have been able to infiltrate the POS network and have installed their own card scraping software on it. When customers swipe their card at the pump, the hacker’s software intercepts the card details en-route to the POS network. The hackers can do this because the magstripe card data isn’t encrypted.

No hardware needed, it's just piss poor network security

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Paper_jam

Paper_jam 831

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At a major brand name gas station I frequently use, I was going to fill up and I noticed the tape seals on the cover panel were broken and the cover panel looked really loose. I went inside and told a cashier and they literally could not have cared less. I didn't even get a "we'll look at it" response, just a shrug.

 

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Iceman

Iceman 2715

Posted
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On 1/14/2020 at 2:19 PM, immortal13 said:

Fuck this noise. Consumers have a right to know where this kind of shit is happening. If stores don't want the bad pub, then monitor the fucking pumps

This all the fucking way.

I don't pay at the pump, but people should have access to info where these fuckers are plying their wares.

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 105154

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18 hours ago, futureman said:

I started paying cash for most things about a year ago.  was a victim of card fraud one time and that was enough.  the two minutes to tell the cashier “$40 on pump 2” isn’t a big deal. 

My approach is that I only use a card for that gas station.  I have two, Chevron/Texaco and Valero, and except on road trips where neither are available (in which case I pay inside), I use either to pay at the pump.  They are 1) lower limit, so you can't get cleaned out, and 2) if there are charges on there that aren't yours, you just dispute them and you're done.  A couple of years ago, I got a call from Valero -- someone had used my "card" to gas up in Colorado, obviously filling a big vehicle -- it was like $250.  That was an unusual charge amount, raised a flag.  They called me to ask about it, "nope, not me, shut it down."  And they did.  I got a new card a week later, never even saw any of the bad charges.

TLDR; if you're gonna pay at the pump, use a gas card only, not a broad-use CC like Visa.

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Mrs Whiggins

Mrs Whiggins 13050

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Sometimes, I think compromise has been maligned too much in this country. But in this case, no deal. Consumer right to know. What's next? I die from food poisoning at Taco Bell and everyone in town has to play Nacho Cheese Doritos Locos Taco Supreme roulette while the Health Department sorts it out? The river of poo alone would rival the Mansfield Dam discussion in Daily Texan. Good grief. Would it really hurt states to protect consumers from fraud?

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immortal13

immortal13 4059

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3 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

Sometimes, I think compromise has been maligned too much in this country. But in this case, no deal. Consumer right to know. What's next? I die from food poisoning at Taco Bell and everyone in town has to play Nacho Cheese Doritos Locos Taco Supreme roulette while the Health Department sorts it out? The river of poo alone would rival the Mansfield Dam discussion in Daily Texan. Good grief. Would it really hurt states to protect consumers from fraud?

This. 

And why can't these little plastic covers have some kind of alarm if opened without authorization? Or why not not make them tamperproof, or made of metal with a lock and not just some shitty plastic? Currently we are supposed to feel safe because there is a fucking sticker over the cover. Jfc

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