Quote:
Originally Posted by elemenoP
This happened at a little falafel joint near me, where an employee was skimming CC numbers (obviously the scale of that endeavor was a lot smaller!). He's in jail now. When people get freaked out about using their CC online, I wonder if those same people give it a second thought when they hand their CC over to a store clerk or waiter. I wonder if there are statistics about which is safer.
eP
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Last I heard (and it's probably shifted somewhat since then, it's been several years), you were about 5 times as likely to have your card number stolen at a brick & mortar retailer, and the average theft was about 10 times as much.
The most likely place is a restaraunt, where employees are very poorly paid, often treated like crap by both customers and employers, and everybody has to have access to the machine that stores everything.
One friend of mind initially freaked out at the idea of the pads that electronically capture your signature. Thing is, with paper signatures, every cashier has access. With the electonic systems, there's maybe one or two people in the entire company that have access, and they are executives with little incentive to steal.
Speculation is that this is organized crime, and that's certainly possible. But I'd be a little surprised if it turned out there weren't some kind of inside man at either B&N or their vendor for the point of sale equipment. It's hard to image a random outsider swapping out cash register parts at over 60 locations an nobody noticing.