If you live in the Dallas area, you might want to rethink using plastic to pay at the gas station. Not because debit and credit cards aren’t a fine way to pay for fuel, but because some jerks are using Bluetooth skimming devices to steal from oblivious drivers at the pump.
Dallas police say they’ve recently discovered five different skimming devices that use Bluetooth, CBS Dallas-Fort Worth (warning: link contains video that autoplays) reports, buried inside payment card kiosks at four different ExxonMobile gas stations.
The devices mean that criminals never have to come back to the machine to collect the data they reap — all that card data gets sent through the air to someone sitting nearby on their computer.
“They can do it in a split second, put it on. So they obviously have knowledge of the pumps,” a Dallas Police lieutenant told the station.
This isn’t the first we’ve heard of some jackanapes employing Bluetooth to steal money at gas stations: we first learned about the issue back in 2014, when it was becoming popular in the southern U.S.
So how can you fight back? Pay with cash. Or if you really want to use plastic, keep an eye out for security tape stickers that have been tampered with, which could mean someone was messing with the kiosk.
Crooks Using Bluetooth To Steal At Gas Pumps [CBS DFW]
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist
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