A credit card skimmer was found at the checkout at the Dollar General in Twentynine Palms, according to the San Bernardino Sheriff’s department. A credit card skimmer is made to look like part of the machine its attached to, and it scans your credit card as you slide it through what you think is just the store’s payment processor. Then the skimmer is later collected and the credit card numbers are then used or sold.
According to the police report – Dollar General is looking through camera footage to see if they can spot who installed the skimming device. If you ever use your card with a device and something feels off – maybe the device feels more clunky or has extra parts on it that don’t look familiar – notify management of the establishment and if the device has been modified by anyone other than the store, contact law enforcement.
You may think that the contactless “tap to pay” cards are even less secure, with minimal contact needed to process a transaction. In reality – the “tap to pay” method is encrypted, meaning that the information passed is meaningless without the proper code to decode it. Credit card skimmers rely on the old “swipe” method where a credit card number is stored in plain numbers on a thin magnetic strip – just waiting for the right device to read it.
