Committed to Credit Card Security? Stop Paying at the Pump
If you hate the annoyance of getting a new credit card when hackers compromise your old one or feel a headache just thinking about fighting fraudulent charges with customer service, consider going inside the gas station to pay for filling your tank. A new report from Visa suggests that criminals are coming for your credit card information at the pump, and they don’t even need a skimmer.
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The two major credit card companies, Visa and Mastercard, gave gas stations until next year to upgrade their outdoor credit card readers for secure chips since it takes money and extensive equipment to upgrade the pumps. Hackers know this, so they target gas station companies with phishing emails and spam to lure employees into downloading viruses that take the data from swiping your card in the old magnetic strip readers. This software isn’t something you could keep an eye out for as a customer, so it could hit your card no matter where you buy gas.
While gas stations can get away with only having magnetic strip readers on the pumps themselves, most of them have the secure point-of-sale systems that use your card’s chip to process payment inside the store. Even if hackers have gotten to the magnetic strip data outside, the more secure nature of the chip system means your payments are still relatively safe. That’s why you should pre-pay for your gas away from the pump whenever possible.
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Of course, if you’re lucky and your gas station of choice already has chip readers on the pumps, you should be okay to pay outside. I know there are some stations near me that do, and the new card readers usually lock my card in the reader while I enter my zip code, or some of them have me swipe the card and then insert it again to read the chip. You can always ask the attendant if you’re unsure about what kind of reader the pumps use.
Getting gas at the pump was already a dicey process before this, and now there’s even more to be wary of. Hopefully, when the companies phase out the last of the magnetic strip readers, we can all breathe easier at the pump.
The News Wheel is a digital auto magazine providing readers with a fresh perspective on the latest car news. We’re located in the heart of America (Dayton, Ohio) and our goal is to deliver an entertaining and informative perspective on what’s trending in the automotive world. See more articles from The News Wheel.