What a surprise, there's a new scam out there to steal your credit card info. But fortunately for
anyone watching this video, it's very easy to avoid if you simply know about it. This
scam involves the "tap to pay" feature that a lot of credit cards have these days. Though I
want to say right off the bat, I'm not going to tell you to avoid using the tap to pay feature.
In fact afterwards, I'll explain why it actually is better to use tap to pay.
It's more secure than other methods, as long as you know how to avoid this
particular scam when using it. So this is how the scam goes. The scammer will
walk up to an ATM machine and put some glue or something in the card slot to block it.
Then they'll hang around near the ATM. And when someone goes up to use it,
they'll find they are unable to put their card in. It's blocked. So the scammer will
then pretend to [help and ] say, "Oh you can't use the card slot, just use the tap to pay feature",
which a lot of ATMs also support. But here's how they might get you.
At the end of withdrawing your money, a ATM machine may say something like,
"Would you like to do something else?" And it asks you yes or no. Though keep in mind,
it might look a little bit different depending on the machine. And a lot
of people apparently just forget to answer this and just walk away before answering it.
So what the scammer then does, if this person forgot, is walk up to the machine themself and
hit yes, meaning I want to do more stuff, which in this case is withdraw more money. So basically
they're counting on the fact that a certain percentage of people will not realize they
have to do this, especially if they've never used the tap to pay feature before on an ATM,
they're not familiar with the process and they'll just hope that people leave the transaction open.
But fortunately, now that you know about the scam, you are completely immune to it as long
as you don't forget. So just going forward, know that if you use the tap to pay feature at an ATM,
just watch out to see if it asks you if you want to do more stuff,
or also make sure that you just go back to the original menu that it showed when you walked up.
So then you know there's no session still active. Now, when I was reading
about this scam, in some of the videos the victims were saying something like,
"Oh I'll never use the tap to pay feature again after that", which is understandable and might
be a gut reaction. But I'm actually going to argue that it's probably better to use the
tap to pay just as long as you don't fall for this scam, because it's actually more secure.
And the reason for that is just like the chip function,
it actually generates a one time code for each individual transaction, instead of actually
providing the ATM or whatever payment terminal with your account info, like your actual credit
card number. It uses some kind of encryption computation to still authorize the transaction.
But if someone steals the info that gets transmitted during the transaction, it's useless
because it already got used. And the advantage of using tap to pay is it really has no risk
of skimming. So credit card skimming is when the scammer will put some kind of device on either the
payment terminal or the ATM to effectively read the magnetic strip as you put it into the machine.
And this of course, is supposed to be mitigated by using the chip. But a lot of machines,
you may have noticed, you put the card in all the way even though you're still
using the chip. So you put it all the way, it kind of holds onto it until the transaction
is done. And then you take it out. Instead of swiping it in and out for the magnetic strip.
But the thing is, these days scammers have gotten so good, they've actually created
devices thin enough to fit into the slot that you put your card into. So even if you're using
the chip. You put it in to use the chip. If it goes in all the way, they're able to read the
entire magnetic strip as it goes in, and they're still able to skim you just for putting it in.
Again, this would only be possible for a device where you have to put the card
all the way in. So if it's one you just dip the chip into and it's only partly inserted,
they wouldn't be able to get the whole card number from the magnetic strip. Anyway,
my point is if you use the tap to pay feature, then you really can't be skimmed.
You just put the thing up to the symbol and then take it away. It's not like you're scanning the
card across anything that can read the strip because it has to be read linearly. And again,
even if they tried to read the data coming off the chip in that moment,
it's going to be useless because it's a one-time thing.
Now, one bonus tip is a lot of credit card skimmers will actually put a false
panel either above or on the side of the ATM machine and catch people typing in their PIN
number. To protect against that, you should always try and cover the PIN
pad when you type in your number and do so assuming that there might be a camera
directly above the PIN pad or even off to the side. Cover it as much as you can.
And then even if they do somehow get the number, then if they don't have the PIN,
then theoretically they shouldn't be able to use it. So now that you're aware of this,
you don't have to worry about it. Just make sure when you go to pay or do whatever, that you fully
complete the transaction and whatever device you're using goes back to the original menu.
If you guys enjoyed this video, definitely give it a big thumbs up for the YouTube
algorithm. And also if you want to check out my Instagram, I post hilarious memes
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you might die of a heart attack from laughing so hard. You can check it out,
it's just @ThioJoe over on Instagram. And if you want to subscribe, I try to make
videos about twice a week. Usually Wednesday and Saturday. And also if you want to keep watching,
the next video I'd recommend is where I was talking about
new scams this year. So I'll put that link right here. There's a lot of them.
So be sure to check that out. And thanks so much for watching. I'll see you in the next one.