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Comment by anonymousjunior | Hacker News Reader

In the second image here [1] there's a security seal on the payment closure as a whole; I'd imagine a simple security seal along the side of the card scanner intake would thwart most would-be card skimmers, no?

At that point the employees could just make it part of the standard inspection and it'd be more obvious to customers if they were missing.

[1]: https://cdn.sparkfun.com/assets/learn_tutorials/6/9/4/Gas_Pu...

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The caption right under that image is: "Front of a US Fuel Pump complete with extremely difficult to source security seal"

"extremely difficult to source" is a link to an ebay page with thousands of different security seals.

It seems to me that you could just put some kind of sensor on the inside of the gas pump access door that notifies someone as soon as the door is opened. If you know there is a maintenance guy scheduled for that day/time, then you just ignore the notification. If not, then you know that there has been unauthorized access to the pump.

That requires money and ongoing effort on the part of whoever monitors that system. As the article stated, there is not a monetary incentive to the responsible party (the station owner) to make this happen. Even with an incentive, it's still an arms race with the bad guys. Things will only get better when we have more secure payments.

Lots of people have access to gas pumps and their keys. Not just the station owners, but the managers. Also city/county/state weights and measures regulators, the guy who maintains the attached screen that shows the local news and weather loop, and probably more that I don't even know about.

From what I've seen about gas pump locks, they look about as "secure" as those round keys that came with every IBM AT-clone in the early 90's. They kept the weak and the ignorant out, but you could unlock your buddy's rig at will.

So... is the trick to have your own key so you can open these things and have a look inside before you swipe your card? If the store is not going to offer me security, I'm going to take care of it myself.

They also link to a page on ebay in the article where you can buy those seals.

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