Cheating gift-cards. It turns out

Cheating gift-cards. It turns out to be fantastically easy to hack the magnetic in-store gift-cards sold at the point-of-sale of many chain stores.

A thief at a store buys a single gift card, but while standing in line, looks at the account numbers printed on the next 10 cards. Since the store's cards are only glued to a piece of cardboard, rather than encased in packaging, the account numbers are easy to see.

The thief then goes home, and using a credit card encoder, reprograms the magnetic stripe to one of the account numbers lifted while in line. He then calls the 800 number provided by the store and finds out how much value was placed on the "stolen" card by a consumer who has since purchased it. The moment he is sure the card has been charged, the thief goes back into the store and spends the victim's funds. Even though the account being drained is different from the account printed on the card the thief is using, the store is never the wiser, because clerks rarely check to see if the numbers match.

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(via /.)