Card skimmers

Credit Card
Photo by YTCount on Unsplash

During the holidays, card skimmers are all over the place. With The Rolex 24, Daytona 500, and bike week coming.. you can be sure there will be lost of thieves trying to steal your card info. Look for the signs.

At the gas pump… look for the little piece of red security tape. Sometimes it’s on the key hole to open the pump or sometimes its where the door would open. If it is broken or you can visibly read words in white on it, chances are it had been tampered with and you don’t want to use that pump. Try getting gas from the pumps closest to the entrance of the store. Thieves will choose the pumps with the least amount of  visibility from the cashier.

When going into gas stations or convenience stores, before you put your card in the card reader give it a little pull where you can grab it. Like where it has a lip to kind of hide your pin number. If it comes completely off it’s most likely a skimmer. It doesn’t take much to distract a cashier and slap one of those covers on. Everything will look and act normal but when they come back and take the cover back off, any and all cards that were put into that machine were skimmed.

ATM machines… where you slide your card in… give that a tug as well because that’s where they will put the skimmer.

Be safe and protect your money!