Pocatello Idaho State Journal: Local incident highlights pervasiveness of identity theft
If you haven’t already heard, there’s a more aggresive means of identity theft & credit card number snatching going on… thieves are now using devices called Skimmers (aka Wedges) that are basically the mag reader component of a credit card scanner device married to memory and made highly portable. (They range in size and shape, but are basically small enough to fit in your hand — like a pager.) Thieves scan one or more cards & download the full track data to a PC/laptop… obviously wifi, pda’s, etc will only make it more expedient to move the data from the Skimmer to the safe store, eventually making it more difficult for law enforcement to prosecute (as the seized device won’t have data on it).
Tip-o-the-hat to my brother Scott for the heads-up