To add to our previous blog post on major credit card scams to watch out for, and to illustrate both how serious and crafty these schemes really are, I read in the news the other day that police in Gainesville, FL have uncovered credit card skimming devices on several ATM machines at various gas stations.
What makes this story even more noteworthy is the fact that these skimmers are equipped with Bluetooth, which makes catching whoever set the devices up much trickier. Because the skimmers are set up wirelessly through Bluetooth, the thief can theoretically access any card that’s been swiped in one of the laced machines through another BT-equipped device, like a laptop or cell phone, without every actually going back to the device.
Luckily, it seems no one has fallen victim to any outright credit card fraud, yet police are urging anyone who’s used the ATMs to check their credit and debit statements and watch them closely, lest the thief racks up thousands of dollars in charges and leaves their victims with a credit history in tatters and in need of serious debt relief. I think the fact that the US Secret Service is involved in the case (which they attribute to a ring of thieves) brings to light how serious a threat this is to your personal information leaking out into the open.
The worst part of the story is reading how simple it is to put one of these things together. Hell, you can outright buy a credit card skimmer online for as little as $50, according to the article. That’s a pretty small price to pay to steal someone’s entire identity.
