Good job invalidating the very name of their stores.
So that is not a simple thing to do, wanna bet an employee was paid to look the other way? Or did they social engineer dressed up as techs? The technology has been about for years now but I am qutie interested on how they got away with the physical access to the systems at so many stores.
I vaguely recall a case or two in the UK like this from a while back. I think they made it look like a break in for cigarettes and booze.
Most Safeway stores are 24/7 so that option is out.
I’m from tech support and I’m here to upgrade the card scanners.
Most retailers just went through the upgrade process to support chip-n-pin cards, so that one would be quite credible.
We’ve heard complaints that the ones in lanes 3, 4, and 5 were all jammed up with some sort of gum… don’t know who would have done such a thing!!
Its actually fairly easy to do, i worked retail in 2014, and apparently a large number of random retailers were hit with skimmers. The way those were installed was that the scammers plugged in a small device onto the either the pin-pad or onto the register, then later they’d swing back and pluck the device out. There’s no need to disassemble the pad, and most of the time there’s not enough time for someone to do so.
Edit: To clarify our store was never affected, but our loss prevention people showed us potentially how it’d be done and with enough distraction one could quickly put something onto a checkout area.
It can be even easier than that. A lot of Safeway stores in the East Bay area are understaffed at night, so much so that there might be only one person watching the entire front end while stocking shelves at the same time. It wouldn’t be difficult to just walk in, fiddle with the checkout machinery, and walk back out without anyone even noticing you were there.
…the fraud was traced back to Colorado locations in Arvada, Conifer, Denver, Englewood and Lakewood.
My God! Their fiendish pattern is obvious! The evildoers are striking towns in alphabetical order! It’s likely their next heist will be in… Lamar, Colorado. To the Batmobile!
I suspect Boulder, Fort Collins, and Golden were also hit, but we just haven’t noticed yet!!
The safeway near me used to be open after midnight, and it was pretty dead then. Depending on the skill of the infiltrator, a quick replace job is probably doable. If the store closes one of its two public entrances at night, it’s big enough for there to be a blind spot.
My safeway hasn’t… yet.
Learn something new every day!
More reason to use tokenization tech, like Android Pay, and not already-out-of-date gimmicks like COIN. They may be able to intercept the number, but by the time the do, it’s already useless to them.
Can we please get some of these skimmers over to my neighbor’s pool? I don’t like swimming there with all those wind-blown tree leaves in the water.
bravo!
Coming forward to warn your customers only 3 months after the fraud was detected is positively stellar!
To be knit picky technically “chip and sig”, but you’re right that it would be an opportune time.
Go ahead and say it: ISIS did that shit. ISIS has infiltrated our debit cards!!! FLEE! GAME OVER MAN! GAME OVER!!
If only 'Merica was great-er, this kind of stuff wouldn’t happen. Shame we can’t find someone who could make that happen…
