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  Geebo 9:02 am on April 21, 2017 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: coin, credit card ( 7 ), debit cards, plastc   

  Add Plastc’s name to the startup graveyard 

  

  Plastc promised its backers a credit card-like device that you could pre-load all your credit and debit cards to it, along with your various discount cards. They promised you would only need your card and it would make your life a utopia of convenience. Check out what the features of Plastc were intended to be in their own YouTube video.

  Wow. Doesn’t that look like an amazing device? It’s no wonder they were able to obtain $9 million in funds from pre-orders alone. This doesn’t even take into account they were entering into a market where there were already players who had shipped product. Coin was a company that promised a similar device and even shipped units. Coin left the market after their device couldn’t overcome technical problems that caused its users to have to continue to carry their cards with them, totally negating the purpose of it. Yesterday, Plastc announced that they were declaring bankruptcy, and it seems like they’re taking the $9 million and going home without ever delivering a single unit.

  So far Plastc has not given any reason why they’re declaring bankruptcy or what is going to happen to their backers’ money. What could have been a contributing factor to Plastc’s demise was the new chip and pin form of credit and debit cards. Instead of swiping, if your card has one of the new chips you have to insert the card into the machine. Could Plastc have failed to foresee the surprisingly quick adoption of this new technology? Could they even have changed the technology used in their devices to accommodate chip and pin?

  With technology developing at an ever-increasing rate, the time between being the next hot thing and the proverbial buggy whip manufacturer is becoming even shorter.

   

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  Geebo 11:28 am on September 21, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: ATM ( 4 ), atm skimmer ( 4 ), debit cards, Periscope ( 2 ), Safety ( 44 ), security ( 46 )   

  New type of ATM skimmers appear in US 

  

  In case you’ve never heard of an ATM Skimmer it’s normally a device that a suspect will insert into the card reader of an ATM. This device will read all the information off your ATM card,including your PIN. It’s not just ATMs though, these skimmers can also be attached to gas pumps and any other stand alone machine that accepts debit cards. These type of skimmers can be usually thwarted by firmly pulling on the slot where the card is inserted, If a part slides out, it’s probably not safe to use that ATM or other machine.

  Recently, the Secret Service released an announcement to financial institutions that a new type of skimmer has shown up in the US and isn’t as easy to spot. The skimmer, called a periscope, is a piece of hardware that is installed inside the ATM. According to the announcement, the suspects access the ATM from the top in order to install the skimmer. The Krebs on Security blog post that’s been linked to recommends that you should only use ATMs that are embedded into the bank’s walls and can’t be accessed from the top.

  Unfortunately, there’s no absolute way to always protect yourself from ATM and debit card fraud. However, you can avoid problems by just using some common sense and if a ATM machine or any other card reading machine feels shady or unreliable just pass it by.