Afternoon fellow Kos Citizens!
As we all know with the election of the Scammer in chief identity thieves and scam runners are more emboldened than ever before. One scam that up till now we had very little ways to combat is Credit card skimmers.
What is a Credit card skimmer? It’s a device that is illegally installed into a ATM or gas pump that copys card info into a file to be retrieved later by an ID thief. The stolen information can be extremely helpful pulling further credit and bank scams on the victims.
What Are Skimmers?
Skimmers are essentially malicious card readers that grab the data off the card's magnetic stripe attached to the real payment terminals so that they can harvest data from every person that swipes their cards. The thief has to come back to the compromised machine to pick up the file containing all the stolen data, but with that information in hand he can create cloned cards or just break into bank accounts to steal money. Perhaps the scariest part is that some skimmers don't prevent the ATM or credit card reader from functioning properly.
https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2469560,00.asp
How To Spot Skimmers
At the gas pump, however, a skimmer can be nearly impossible to detect. That's because criminals will often open a pump with a master key and install the skimmer inside the pump. There often aren't any clues on the outside that would clue you in to the skimmer's presence... except the Bluetooth signal that criminals use to stealthily retrieve stolen card data.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/leemathews/2017/09/20/this-app-can-tell-you-if-a-criminal-is-trying-to-skim-your-credit-card/#6654c1c33833
I’ve been forwarding everyone to this new app from Sparkfun. All it does is scan the local area to see if a Bluetooth device is active and responding to certain requests and pings. If it does It may be a skimmer!!
Just a little tool that can be helpful if you ever have to use a janky looking untrustworthy gas pump or ATM.
Better still it’s a app that can run unconnected to any network, For those of you (like me) who keep outdated devices for off net uses.
play.google.com/…
sorry it’s only out for android for now.