Gift Card Hacking

TheSauce writes "MSNBC has this discussion of how easy it is to hack and jack the contents of those lovely Plastic Gift Cards one sees at most Mass Merchants and Consumer Electronics stores. One retailer notes that the odds of this occuring are about at the level of being pickpocketed."

but its true that

[Anonymous Coward]

gift cards want to be free!

Big Deal

[mlknowle]

Big deal - this is theft. Why does it get featured on ./ ? Because it involves something remotly technology related. Guess what - it's still stealing - this is no different than rummaging through an open cash register drawer.

Whee

[ErikZ]

So, after spending hundreds of dollars in equipment, casing the store and memorizing the numbers, your reward is:

Books!
Cans of Paint!
Socks!

The risk/reward here is pathetic. They would be better off stuffing things into their oversized coats during the holiday rush.

Re:Theft isn't new.

[Angry White Guy]

Why didn't I think of that?

Now I can get everything on my christmas list and screw over a horde of people during the holiday season! Isn't technology great, even when it's old technology...

HA!

[BiggestPOS]

According to the Tyler Morning Telegraph, teen-agers used a similar method for using gift cards to steal money from an electronics retailer in Tyler, Texas last December.

I fucking live in this town. I had no idea a vast conspiracy to defraud Best Buy was happening all around me this whole time. I figured this town had the collective IQ of a walnut. The whole time I lived here I could of been hanging out with sk1pt k1dd13z.

Re:Wonder which LARGE retailer it could be?

[Angry White Guy]

They sit right out in the open at the Wal-mart in Windsor, Ontario. Just hanging there in the checkout aisle begging to be taken.

Tells you something about:
A) Honesty of Canadians.
B) Trusting nature of Canadians.
or C) Intelligence of Canadians.

I'll let you pick

AWG

Re:Barnes and Noble.

[jeffy124]

most places already do this. looking through a bunch of receipts from christmas, Texaco, ShopRite (a PA-area food store), Kmart, Walmart, and Bed Bath & Beyond print the last 4 digits, Levi's Outlet at Franklin Mills Mall prints the whole number.

That's ok for me though, as I know how to protect myself. Dont trash the receipt at the store. At home, carefully cut up each digit individually using a pair of scissors, separate the piles into several seperate trash bins somewhere downtown, the more blocks apart the better.

Coffee!

[AndroidCat]

I got a Starbucks gift-card for Christmas. I'm tempted to run the card through a reader to see what's on it. Hell, my apartment laundry card has better security (it's a "smart" card).

Starbucks never has Raktajino, so they'd deserve it! :^)

One card to rule them all ?

[freaker_TuC]

Lord of the cards ...

Re:What are the odds

[SCHecklerX]

What are the odds of something like this actually hapening? How many thieves are there out there with the technical know how to pull this off, compared to the public at large?

A lot more now :)