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Comment by rwhitman | Hacker News Reader

This is an epidemic at gas stations in Southern California. I've been nailed by skimmers in LA, and a lot of my friends have too. My girlfriend refuses to use the debit cart option at Arco gas stations for fear of her card info being stolen again, and its a legit concern.

They're impossible to spot unless you plan on trying to pry off the front of every payment kiosk, which as far as I know most banks and gas stations frown upon...

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I always jiggle the reader with a bit of gusto before I use an ATM. All of the ATMs that I have found have been sturdy enough that I don't worry about damaging them.

I do too, but having never seen a skimmer, I'm not sure how effective this is. The slots are often loose enough to jiggle, though not loose enough to seem fraudulent.

there certainly has to be a method that could be devised to prevent this type of fraud. Visually a lot could be done that should foil someone looking to attach a skimmer.

From continuous images, seamless faces to make it obvious something is added on, to screen based keyboards. I am sure a lot of thought is put into it. I would hazard that the losses are not sufficient to fix it.

Yeah my first thought on reading the article is that if enough actors cared about this they would redesign the standard for card readers so that the card goes flush into the reader without any protrusions (some are already like this) and then market this fact so that machines that aren't flat are viewed with suspicion, but I'm sure the costs to replace all the machines out there and do the marketing would be enormous at this point, and you would need buy-in from a ridiculous amount of companies so it is unlikely to happen.

It could happen if pushed by the companies that make the ATMs, rather than the banks.

I agree completely. For a bank ATM I'm sure that they have a lot to lose from skimmers, as it affects their customers' accounts. But for a gas station, a generic ATM do they really stand to lose much from the skimmer? They still get your money. And in many cases I'm suspicious that its shifty gas station employees, store clerks that are installing these things in the first place. Who else has the time to go and study the layout of the card reader, maintain it and retrieve the data etc without getting caught? The only way there is going to be a real change is with legislation in my opinion

I can confirm this, I live in Southern California and I have had multiple cards stolen. I try not to use my card anymore but always remembering to get cash from the bank is really inconvenient.

The only time you should ever use your PIN number is when it's absolutely required to complete a transaction. That means at ATMs, getting cash back at a retail store, or purchasing certain items like money orders or prepaid credit cards. NEVER use your PIN outside of these transactions. It increases your risk significantly.

At Arco they only accept debit. I would never use a debit card if I could avoid it. There are much more protections and insurance on credit card transactions, but if money comes out of debit, its gone.

I had no idea. Any particular cities/areas in particular? (I live in LA.)

Burbank, Orange County, El Segundo.. hard to tell tho because you don't find out till later

See

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/03/credit-card-skimmin...

It's not easily avoidable.

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