Monday, February 19, 2007

Card skimming at supermarket checkouts

Card skimming is the technique of installing a fake Credit/Debit card reader to capture card information. Until now, this only existed in the Bank ATM world. But no more: now it happened at Stop & Shop checkouts.

They would not now be able to tamper with the units the way they did before," Keane said. He declined to reveal details of how the scam worked, other than to say it involved card readers being removed, tampered with, and reinstalled. "Our investigation has not uncovered any involvement or suspected involvement of any Stop & Shop personnel in the tampering.
I am a regular Stop & Shop customer, and I don't buy this. Someone can't just walk into a store, remove a card reader and reinstall it (even if the whole thing takes 2 minutes). Unless it involved the company that services the POS terminals. In that case, why isn't S&S pointing the finger at them? I think we are seeing another gradual release of bad news (like ChoicePoint and TJX).