Walmart Stored Value Cards Compromised 450
morcheeba writes "It appears that Walmart's pre-paid gift cards have been hacked. Customers are buying cards and finding that criminals have already emptied them of value. It seems someone has access to Walmart's database and/or registration data, and can create clones of recently activated cards. (via engadget)"
What't the penalty for this? (Score:2, Interesting)
It won't bankrupt WalMart (Score:3, Interesting)
Cheers,
Erick
Re:It won't bankrupt WalMart (Score:5, Informative)
The only thing they have going for them is the interst they can raise on the uncashed cards. (Except in states not subject to escheet law.)
Re:It won't bankrupt WalMart (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It won't bankrupt WalMart (Score:3, Informative)
"Careful legal planning can potentially reduce the risk of gift certificates becoming abandoned property. Incorporating the issuer of the gift certificate in a state that exempts gift certificates from its escheat can reduce liabil
Re:What't the penalty for this? (Score:5, Interesting)
where do you live, in a fairytale world where comic book legal logic prevails? of course it's illegal, probably goes under fraud too and depending on how it was done maybe some misuse of power or illegal telecommunications interception.
or perhaps you say that stolen calling cards are legal to use as well and that it's legal to use credit card numbers you found from google? and that shoplifting is legal if you just manage to get out of the store? and that hacking into a bank is legal since they put their computer on the internet and you only used public protocols? sorry but that kind of logic only gets you in jail where you'd belong if you did those things.
Re:What't the penalty for this? (Score:5, Informative)
Um.... such Gift Cards appears to be a form of Debit card (and in some cases are exactly that), and would to my casual glance be prosecutable as fraud, and investigated by the Secret Service [cornell.edu].
Re:What't the penalty for this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Stored value cards are classed exactly the same as paper gift certificates, as that is what they are. (They are also subject to escheet laws in most states.)
I was part of a small team which created the first such card - Blockbusters - and am still amazed at how fast they've proliferated.
http://www.theboyz.biz/ [theboyz.biz] - Your source for computers, parts and more!
Re:What't the penalty for this? (Score:3, Interesting)
Possibly; however, did you read 18 USC 47 sec 1029 [cornell.edu]? In particular, Subsection e.1:
the term ''access device'' means any card, plate, code, account number, electronic serial number, mobile identification number, personal identification number, or other telecommunications service, equipment, or instrument identifier, or other means of account access that can be used, alone or in conj
I think it's an inside job (Score:5, Interesting)
First, look at how gift cards work. Many retailers use the model where their gift card records in their database created upon activation. This means they don't even ask the manufacturers for a list of "cards printed"; they simply direct the manufacturer to produce "a million cards in this number sequence, label them $20," that sort of thing. The value is added when the record is created at issuance. I'm assuming Walm*rt is operating in a similar fashion.
It's theoretically safe, because a shoplifted card isn't redeemable. The cards never actually "store" their value, all the value is located only in the database (more correctly, the value is in the ability to redeem from the database.)
So, if someone is redeeming the cards in a distant state just hours after issuance, they're doing it by sniffing the data real-time, somewhere on the inside of Walm*rt's systems. The article implies that the thief knows when the card is issued, and cashes it in within hours. Cashing the cards in distant states implies network access to at least run the scam (although that may be an email to a conspirator.) The fact that the victims were located in different states implies the perpetrators either have central access to the database involved, or have access to the POS systems that are selling and activating the cards.
The points of access are numerous. This could be happening in the POS registers, the store POS servers, the networking gear, the central authorizing servers, the central sales logging servers, or the database. It could be someone in their security group looking at electronic journals on-line. It could be a hacker in the parking lot with 802.11 gear telnetting to any of the above equipment, emailing card info to his buddies. The redemption is probably being done via "forged" cards, which might be as simple as printing a barcode on a sticker, covering the existing barcode, and then keeping the cards after redeeming them to hide the evidence. A smart thief would redeem $149 on a $150 card to keep the card with the $1 balance on it in his pocket.
That's a lot of ground to cover for their investigators. Given their M.O. I can think of a few traps they can set to catch these guys, but they're probably going to take time to implement. And with the high probability of an inside job, who do you trust in their systems end to help you catch the bad guys?
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:4, Interesting)
More and more stores are selling cards with no value displayed on them. When you buy one it is blank and the person at the register adds both activation information and the value at the time the card is purchased. The cards on the racks are essentially blank.
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:5, Informative)
A key example of this is how the Starbucks cards work. You can choose to put $10 on it, or $100, or $8.13 or whatever. It runs down, you just add more funds to it much like a debit card.
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:5, Informative)
The greatest thing (for the company) about those Starbucks "debit-style" cards is that people who are putting their money in them by charging them up, are effectively combining their money and giving Starbucks a big cash loan that Starbucks can keep in the bank and make interest from until you use eventually use them. So they get your money AND all of the interest made from your money. Keep the cash in your own account and keep your interest as well.
Great business technique.
N.
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:4, Insightful)
cards before. (This is all speculation, I read the article) One possiblity
is that, the person doing this, for instance, has a bar code printer (if
their smart). If they are stupid, they have an in on the database, and are
transferring the credit to their card, then using it. Easy to track even if
Wal-Mart isn't logging transactions, and even tho I agree that their probably
stupid, big companies are usually smart to pay lots of money for security
(expensive != good, of course). So, they print out a card, (or a sticker for a
card) go to a store, buy it up. Looks like they are sticking to a store in
Cali, so unless they are reading slashdot, they are screwed if they go there
too often, unless they have a crew (have a girl, makes guys stupid) and even
then, they are screwed, it'll just take longer.
As for the sniffing idea, well shit, every Wal-Mart I've seen has at least 4
WAPs with antenees. Good ones too, Cisco 1500s which pump out a lot more power
than linksys (at least the default ones). I can't imagine that the registers
(which have to send info over the wire somewhere) send them encrypted or
anything like that. Personally, I'm surprised that we are just now hearing
about it.
Oh, and don't be surprised if this going at any number of stores. I see WAPs
everywhere. Brave New World.
SealBeater
That doesn't surprise me. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:4, Interesting)
You don't need access to WAP, or even the central database to pull this off. Most retailers have their cards in an assigned BIN range, which is a range of 16 or 19 digit (can be other lengths, but 16 or 19 is typical). If you can figure out what the range is (easy -- just buy one or more cards), get a card number generator program, use the 800 AVR (Automated Voice Response) number, and keep trying until you hit a card number with value. Fix up your card, and you're in business.
These guys may get away with this for awhile, but most Retailers get fraud reports which they can use to analyse this kind of thing. Once they figure out the pattern, they can wait for the criminal(s) to make a mistake.
It is not easy to prove fraud since gift cards are not linked to a customer, so they must catch the criminal with an altered card, or prove there is no way that a card bought at store A could be used at store B in a given time frame.
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:4, Interesting)
Is there a geographical correspondence to where these cards are emptied? Or online?? Get an ip address, subpoena- this sorta stuff isn't taken lightly by the feds anymore.
Or better yet.. can they spot the activation locations.. do THOSE have a correspondence?
It seems to me this case would be simple to solve with some minor investigation of the data. And logs (which can be enabled if they aren't already.)
The only odd thing here is the case went public. Usually you keep these silent until you have a firm suspect. They're easier to catch if they keep at the same routine, instead of getting scared off to not return for a while. I'm guessing they pretty much already have this guy in hand...
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:5, Informative)
Re:OT: Walm*rt (Score:3, Informative)
Re:OT: Walm*rt (Score:5, Funny)
Why do people refer to Walm*rt with a star in the name?
Well, they might be using the star as a sphinctor symbol. Yessir. Heck, we used to put 'em by people's names on memos to denote sphinctorhood.
Re:OT: Walm*rt (Score:3)
That said, I fee
They do have logs. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They do have logs. (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, if it was an inside job this could be useful.
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:4, Informative)
I'd say about 100 square feet of the store is under surveillance...
You see 20 registers and 20 black bubbles...
2 of those have cameras...
1 might be recorded...
there's probably someone watching them only on a very high volume weekend.
I worked in a wal-mart for a number of years, the bubbles are to scare people, like the "security tag detectors" on the doors...
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:2)
What the fuck are gift cards for, anyways? Me, I like cold hard cash (or cache).
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:5, Informative)
Your typical store has at least 6 sets of switches: UPC office (where the servers are kept), GM (general Merchandise), GRC (Grocery), Garden Center, PICS (In the electronics Department, and Receiving. These switches are laid out into at least 3 vlans: POS, Non POS, and Wireless. By Default, the POS vlans are set to ports 1-12 on the switch. The switches are connected by a fiber backbone that usually involves two separate physical routes...so if one is cut, the other will be able to pick up the load. They're concnentrated to some cisco routers, and it'll go out either a 56K modem line or a T1 line, using a Hughes Sattelite link as a backup.
You've got your usual mixture of IBM Cash register controllers (CC and DD), what they call their "SMART" system (I think it's running a flavor of AIX), BOSS (Best Optical Selling System), MMS (Multi-Media Server, runs the Wal-mart TV Network), and a few others.
It's trivial to get into a UPC office to gain access to these things. Most stores don't check ID's, let alone work orders. Default passwords are commonplace ("ma5t3r", "9052/9052" and the like), and it's very easy to get an employee to Log in for you if needed. WalMart keeps printed logs of just about every transaction that is created, as well as in electronic form.
If it were an inside job (which I doubt knowing the intellect of most Wal-Mart Workers. Do you want to be the squiggly?), all someone would have to do is gain access to the UPC office, bring yer good ole' hub, a WAP, and volia....no one would ever notice (usually because there are boxes stacked in the UPC offices, and well, no one really has a clue to what really needs to be in there, anyway).
(Posted AC to protect my job)
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easy enough, then, to be a networking pro and get a job as a Walmart drone by just not putting your qualifications on the application? If one's new coworkers are then as stupid as you imply, running an inside job such as this doesn't sound too difficult.
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:3, Interesting)
For the intellectual challenge.
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:4, Funny)
Investigators are looking into the matter.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:4, Interesting)
So these 6 sets of switches are located in various places in the store? And there's a fiber backbone linking them all togheher?
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:4, Informative)
Remeber that 100 base TX over cat 5 ethernet is rated only for a max of 150 meters per segment. If you've got to run further than that (and going up into ceilings, around ducts, etc., makes for a long run quickly) you need some kind of hardware to act as a repeater, be it a router, switch, hub, or booster. Those cost big money, since not only do you have to buy them, you have to install them, you have to power them from their own electrical outlet which also costs lots of money to install. You also have to pay to maintain them with service contracts, monitoring software, payroll costs, etc., which means that even a simple repeater ends up costing roughly the same as a full blown 24-port switch, while giving you only 1/24th the value.
The cheapest solution is to put a router and fiber switch at your building's service entrance. Run the fiber to a closet in each corner of the building, and in each closet put a switch. Then you can run the final wires from the closets to your devices over cat 5.
This eliminates "random repeaters" hanging unmaintainably in the ceilings. Fiber is high capacity, and unaffected by EM interference generated by other devices in the building, such as HVAC systems or lighting ballasts, and is well suited to the long portions of the runs.
10 years ago, if you were in a Walm*rt or other big retailer, chances are the wiring was completely different. IBM POS systems at the time used a "store loop" system, running over shielded two-twisted-pairs. Those runs were rated for 2000 feet, but I know of some installations that pushed them as high as 4000 feet. While it was a loop topology designed to run from register to register, for maintenance reasons many retailers found it simpler to run individual lines from a central switch panel (typically an Autoshunt device.) With 2000 foot cable lengths, this is possible, where the 300-375 foot cat 5 is not. NCR used a "Starlan" network topology, again all wires were brought back to a central closet. And Siemens Nixdorf ran yet another proprietary serial network in a hub-and-spoke topology through boxes called "star boxes".
It wasn't until the adoption of ordinary PCs as cash registers that ethernet caught on in the retail world. And since ethernet cards were way cheaper than token ring cards (no IBM tax) and far, far cheaper than store loop cards (for the proprietary register networking), ethernet was adopted on price alone even though other networking alternatives had their attractions.
While it may seem more complicated today, you should have tried to troubleshoot problems with any of those other "networking" technologies. The IBMs, in particular, acted a lot like a really slow token ring loop, and could talk only in one direction. Confuse just one computer, and the whole loop failed. Break two computers, and now none of the computers can even tell you where the break occurred anymore. Also, you have to train technicians on all the magic diagnostic commands, the electrians on the funny wiring requirements, and you have to have special software running on special hardware with a special OS; whereas ethernet is just ethernet. And everybody knows ethernet, which means service contracts and support staff just got way cheaper, too.
Re:Store is too big. (Score:3, Informative)
It's not Wal-Mart's maximum.. it's copper ethernet's maximum. http://www.duxcw.com/faq/network/cablng.htm [duxcw.com]
Holy Holes-In-Your-Security, Batman! (Score:3, Interesting)
Am I alone in noticing this as a nightmarishly insecure system? Consider this scenario: Hacker enters the UPC office, then alters the prices
Or system error... (Score:5, Interesting)
Walm*rt may have an error in their central authorizing servers that's "confusing" redemption replies. Imagine a server that accepts requests from tens of thousands of different registers (probably a mainframe.) All those responses have to go back to the place they came from. What if a response was corrupted and an approval went back to a wrong register?
Or what if a request was corrupted? What if some stack corruption in their register changed a 12345 into a 22345, and they just happened to match a card issued elsewhere?
Or, what if the manufacturers screwed up and printed duplicate serial numbers on the backs of a batch of cards? Jane Doe goes to buy a card, but that serial number was already purchased by John Smith in a different state. If Jane's purchase request was made "offline", the card would be given to her immediately, but the card activation would have to be made after she left. Now, if Jane redeems her card, she uses John's value. Walm*rt would have no way to go back to Jane to say "Sorry, we gave you a bad card."
For these scenarios to work with a card being cashed within hours of being issued seems highly unlikely until you remember one thing: Walm*rt operates over 8000 stores, with probably over 200,000 POS registers, each of which is cranking through perhaps two or three hundred transactions a day. When you start factoring in just how many transactions might be corrupted, having a couple of "unlikely" coincidences seems more like a statistical certainty than a random chance.
Re:Or system error... (Score:4, Interesting)
Walmart's cards are "rechargeable" after all (and anyone can add funds to any card), so the POS system might not find anything wrong with 100 people crediting $20 to card 412345678.
Heck, you could walk out with some gift cards that hadn't been activated yet, reprogram/restripe them to match your card, and stick them back on the shelf. As long as you knew when the balance was increased, you'd have a veritable cornucopia of digital cashflow. Granted, you're limited to spending it at Walmart or Sam's Club, but it's there.
Unsurprising (Score:2)
Re:Unsurprising (Score:2)
Unless it's as simple as a previous poster mentioned: pay off Nate the Night Shelf Stock Boy to get a few minutes access into a wiring closet and plant an access point. They could probably sniff
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:4, Interesting)
IANAWME but I do know that the cleaner American big-box discount retailer (think red) video captures every credit card transaction and I don't think it's going very far out on a limb to assume they do the same with gift cards. If Wally World does the same it will be only a matter of days before the crooks are caught...unless they are running this like the old cloned-cellphone game where the crooks sell the cloned goods, but don't actually use them personally.
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:2)
So they simply print up in duplicate, a bunch of Walmart cards, and stock the store with sequentially numbered cards. I mean what Walmart employee would notice you "adding" cards, which are non-redeemable anyway?
Then they simply do a daily inventory of the cards that have been purchased, email their co-conspirator in another state and use their duplicate card to redeem the card. Voila!
It doesn't seem that difficult - mind you, the simplest explanation is an inside job.
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:5, Interesting)
Also - many retailers have the cards just lying around the store - flip them over and if you are lucky (B&N, Borders, CVS, etc...) the card number is just there. Write it down, and wait for someone to activate it (buy it). the rest is up to you.
Again - all you have to do is be an observant shoper - what do the cards look like, are they sequential, is the card numbered covered with a scratch-off (better security), etc... Because most of these gift cards ride on the Visa/MC/AMEX networks, they have to conform to these rules, thus have easily guessable numbers, stupid PIN numbers etc...
Just my $0.02
get a free ipod! [freeipods.com] This really works... [iamit.org] Only one GMAil invite left!...
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I think it's an inside job (Score:5, Interesting)
Quick background:
-None of the "amount data" is stored on the gift card. It's all server side, interfaced by the cash registers when swiped. All the card has is a unique ID number to identify itself to the register when swiped.
-The cards used have credit card type stripes on the back, easily readable by *many* cheap swipe readers. http://www.barcodediscount.com/cats/credit-card-r
-The cards are also sold on shells that anyone can get to, and they are on cardboard backing packaging where is it *very* easy to just bend the package and have full access to swiping the card.
The procedure:
-First the criminal buys a bunch of cards for the lowest possible amount. I think this is $5. They now have valid cards.
-Next the criminal takes a small Credit Card swiper into the store, grabs a hand full of the cards and swipes a ton of them..stores the card info into memory on the device or a small laptop/pda in their pocket or purse. then they place the card back on the shelf and go home.
-They go home and use the numbers they have taken from cards at the store and program them over the valid $5 card they had bought.
-A few days later, under the assumption that the cards they had copied have been legitimately sold and not yet used they go into the store with their copies and use them. All it takes to verify the card is working is to find a stupid wal-mart drone and ask them to scan it and tell you the worth of the card. As far as the cash register system is concerned the card is valid because it has a valid ID number. If it comes back with more than $5 on the card available for spending, they criminal wins. Spend the card and go on their way.
-Now when the actual owner of the card comes in it will appear to have been spent, as its ID number is the same as the one used by the criminal has been used, even though the card technically has not.
Its rather ingenious actually, and works best at Xmas. You scan cards the 15-23 assuming they will be activated and you will have a few days until they are spent (at least until the 25th) as they are popular Xmas gifts. It's also hard but not impossible to track the criminal, as you have to find the time of the transaction and dig up video of the transaction taking place...and most walmarts have rather shotty video quality at the registers, but the chance of getting caught in the act are slim and none. But if you do it, don't be surprised if cops show up at your door a week later. Snoogins.
A little late? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A little late? (Score:3, Funny)
Bad Publicity (Score:5, Insightful)
Wal-Mart does not need anymore bad publicity, this should be a non-issue, if people got cheated, they need to provide recompense. It's not like they can't afford it.
Re:Bad Publicity (Score:3, Interesting)
Cool but.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Cool but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ummm, considering the number of cameras in every Walmart I have ever seen, it will only be a matter of time before whoever is doing this gets caught. I would bet money that sooner or later Walmart will start sending fake cards through the system (with high dollar amounts) to catch these kinds of people too.
Lots of bubbles, not many cameras (Score:3, Insightful)
However, in most cases, only a few actually contain cameras. They might move the cameras around, but remember, wally-world labor is cheap, glass bubbles are cheap, and cameras are expensive.
Re:Cool but.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Old adage.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Old adage.. (Score:4, Informative)
People have the right to form a union if they want to. If you don't like unions then don't join them. It's not anyone else's problem. Despite complaints from people about unions (including my own personal experience) their presence is better than their abscense. We've already seen what happens when we don't have the right to form unions.
How can you be "anti-competitive"? I don't know what you mean, mind explaining?
Do you know anything about predatory pricing, discriminatory pricing, and display fees? I didn't think so or you wouldn't be posting.
I have no experiences with the discriminatory behavior, so I can't really comment much on your final statement. In my area, there are more women working in Wal*Mart than there are men, so I don't know how true your statement is in terms of the entire company. Your area may have problems, but I would link that more to the poor managerial staff, and not Wal*Mart in general. But as I said, I don't have experience with that, so I can't comment much.
First of all, the CEO must ultimately take responsibility for the company. In fact CEO's have been arrested for offenses committed by their managers or even salespeople usually as a result of healthcode violations. Walmart also has a responsibility as a company to provide for a fair and non-discriminatory work environment and they haven't done that. Maybe you missed the news when Walmart had a class action lawsuit against them for disciminatory behaviour, concerning the lack of women who received promotions. Next time you are in a Walmart take a look at what positions the women usually hold as compared to the men.
Re:Old adage.. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's amusing.
Don't join. Heh.
A company up here in Canada was bought up by a major telco. The union employees in the major telco forced a vote on the employees of the smaller company, making it mandatory for the smaller company's employees to join the union if they wanted to keep their jobs.
Yeah, they had a choice, all right.
reimbursement (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:reimbursement (Score:2, Informative)
Re:reimbursement (Score:2)
Re: reimbursement (Score:2)
> at least Walmart can afford to reimburse those customers
I wonder whether businesses are smart enough to hire actuaries to tell them what the economic impact of compromised technology could be, and whether actuaries have enough risk data to actuall put a number on it.
Re:reimbursement (Score:3, Informative)
I think this has been going on for a while... (Score:5, Interesting)
Theres an 800 number you can call to find out the card's balance, so it just takes a little time and guesswork to find a card number with a balance on it.
Why steal when you can make? (Score:2, Interesting)
In this case, no other customer is going to report missing money, and this someone can quietly purchase and "top up" the card regularly until maybe the auditing season.
Re:Why steal when you can make? (Score:2)
Jolyon
Re:Why steal when you can make? (Score:3, Insightful)
You'd probably get a few of their passwords that way too.
Re:Why steal when you can make? (Score:3, Interesting)
There might be a system of checks and balances, like the card not being
activated unless/until the til is checked at the end of the day, to prevent the
employees simply issuing themselves cards. It might even check against a different
database..other than the above pure speculation, I agree.
SealBeater
snort (Score:2, Insightful)
And they can't even keep their cards secure. What a joke.
Walmart single handedly has shutdown thousands of small town down town areas all over the nation. That's the new culture, a big square ugly box of a building, th
Not to interrupt your OT Walmart rant... (Score:4, Interesting)
The US simply can't compete with cheap labor like this so... We use it if they want to supply it.
Perhaps it would be better for these people to slave and die in the fields instead of becoming industrialized, but I'm not sure. Every nation that has gone through this process started this way - out of necessity.
Don't weep too uncontrolably for China. At the rate they're going their economy will soon dwarf the US. Pray that their governmental system changes before them or perhaps YOU will be working for
Re:snort (Score:4, Funny)
"more linking errors??? You are going to get it now BITCH!!!!" *whip* *whip*
It seems. (Score:3, Funny)
Corporate Policy? (Score:3, Interesting)
Couldn't have happened to a nicer company (Score:2, Funny)
--
The only thing worse than being held hostage by Muslims is being rescued by Russians.
Here's the simple solution. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Here's the simple solution. (Score:2)
Re:Here's the simple solution. (Score:4, Insightful)
Wal-Mart expires these cards when? (Score:5, Interesting)
If there is an insider trading information (that could NEVER happen, right?) then security is way off and Wal Mart still loses.
If the system is open to outsiders to hack and they have the ability to grab the latest cards purchased and burn data and make purchases within three hours then the system is way too open.
People who pull off these scams aren't interested in most goods - they want cash. I suppose that the easiest method is to buy a case or 10 of cigarettes or to try to return a high-dollar item. The former can be sold almost anywhere and the latter will give the thief cash, but only after a second pass at the Wal Mart chain. The latter is a high-risk approach and it isn't consistent with an ongoing breach...
If only a few stories are out about these cards, but the breach of the cash control system is so complete that the funds can be diverted within three hours, then the problem is far more common and serious than Wal Mart wants to disclose. The system must have been compromised so thoroughly that only a complete replacement would eliminate the problem. Wal Mart data mines (last I read, they had the largest database of consumer purchases on the planet) and these cards are clearly an integral part of their data capture system. The cost of "fixing" the system must be far greater than the losses thus far. Of course, that could be hundreds of millions of dollars....
Re:Wal-Mart expires these cards when? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you return an item to the store, they don't typically return cash. I returned a ~ large item, and they would only give it back in terms of store credit - i.e. value stored with the card. They refused to return it as cash or a credit to the credit card used to purchase the item.
Just be careful that they do give it back to you. I had a cashier try and keep my card even though it had $45 value left on it. She tossed it in the garbage after the transaction. I made sure she fished it out and returned it to me.
I've seen more 'fishy' cash-register things at Wal-Mart than any other store. Things like the cost of a good mysteriously increasing in price up to 50% between the shelf and the cash register. And, according to those who this has happened to, is a regular occurance.
Maybe it is just the Wal-Mart near here, but I really can't trust them.
Re:Wal-Mart expires these cards when? (Score:3, Interesting)
This happens at many stores. Usually, it's because some item is being marked down for the week, but the store is taking its sweet time updating its database.
In California, the law is very clear about this. The price at the shelf always trumps the price at the cash register. We even have inspectors who make sure this
Didn't we see this story before? (Score:5, Interesting)
In that case, people were writing down the number of a card still on the shelf, or taking pictures of the bar code or something, and then noting what the sequence is (they are in order, after all) and then going home, and using the 1-800 number to see how much money was on the card to see when it was sold.
Once they found a number with money on it, they'd modify a card that they had (printing bar codes and reprogramming magnetic strips is easy) to have that number, and go and spend somebody else's money. Easy.
Seems easy enough to track, as 1-800 numbers include caller ID type info, so just see what number was called to check the balance of the card before it was depleted of funds, and if the same number shows up a few times, call the police ...
To make matters worse, the fine print basically said that this sort of loss was the customer's problem, not the retailer's. So the retailer was refusing to pay people for the lost money ...
In any event, giving a gift card sucks, even without this scam. It has *all* the tackiness of giving cash, but with the additional tackiness of telling you where you can spend this money. If you're going to buy me a present, buy me a present. If you want to give me cash, I certainly like cash. But don't spend cash on a gift card ... either use it to buy me something, or just give me the cash.
And if this does happen to you, scream bloody murder. Do not accept anything less than all the lost money, even if the fine print says that it's not their responsiblity. Call the local media if you have to. Make a scene in the store. Call the corporate office if you have to ... you'll probably eventually get your money.
Why? Why? WHY, I ASK?! (Score:3, Funny)
Gift Cards are Evil Genious (Score:4, Funny)
I'm a fan of capitalism, so I don't want them to ban gift cards, but I really hate them. Damn you, you evil genious!
the concept was already flawed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:the concept was already flawed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Owned! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Owned! (Score:2)
What about it? Are you trying to say that Walmart actions make people stupid? Sure, I don't like walmart too much, but it doesn't mean that walmart customers are stupid. They go to walmart because it is cheap.
Re:Owned! (Score:2)
Sweet! Now Ed can trade his family-owned grocery that made him enough to make ends meat for a
Monopolies hurt everyone (except the shareholder), not just the small business owner.
Re:Owned! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Owned! (Score:3, Insightful)
Walmart is notorius for squeezing every last panny out of the companies they buy goods from. While in the strictest economic sense, this is a great idea for Walmart, it is decimating other companies that pay a living wage to their employees, fueling outsourcing and bankrupsy in this
Re:Owned! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:in case it gets slashdotted (Score:4, Funny)
The injustice is that you now get *good* karma!
Re:in case it gets slashdotted (Score:2)
Not at all, dumb schmuck posted as AC.
Re:in case it gets slashdotted (Score:4, Funny)
Looks like the cuplrit is going to really get it in the ass...
Re:in case it gets slashdotted (Score:4, Funny)
I wonder just what rectumfying is. Maybe it's like "radidzomai" in Greek (to be buggered by a raddish), or the Tossed Salad Man. I'll bet rectumfying would deter anyone else from hacking gift cards!
-Colin
Re:transexual? (Score:3, Informative)