Credit car numbers sent via radio at gas stations

[snopes]

Comment: I got this from a friend. Is it true?

There's a scam going on around the Finger Lakes that you should be aware
of. When you insert a credit card into the pump to buy gas, in most
cases your credit card information is sent to the receiving terminal in
the gas station in the clear via radio signals. What's been happening is
that thieves are parking at these stations and using scanners to pick up
your data. That happened to me two weeks ago at a big gas station along
5&20 in Waterloo. A lot of fraudulent internet charges appeared on my
bill the next day. Visa shut my card down after less than $150 had been
charged, and I won't be liable for anything, but it's still a pain.
There have been reports of this occurring in the southern Finger Lakes and
elsewhere.

From now on, I'm paying for my gas by taking the credit card into the
store or using cash.

To be honest, I've never looked before but I might later tonight when I go for a spin, but I would assume they would be hard wired through the existing conduits that are already going from the pumps. Some places may do this, it is possible as in we have the technology, but I doubt it for the reason mentioned in the OP and there is already a means to get the information from point A to point B.

I could be totally wrong and this could be a huge loophole that cost cutting provides but I can't really see it happeneing.

ETA: Unless the OP is referring to a 'credit car' in which case I have no idea what one is.

I'm about to go for the aforementioned spin so I'll see if there are any little arials on top of the bowsers or near them which may have caused people to believe it is transmitted in that way.

[htonl]

The technology certainly does exist; at petrol stations here the attendants (we don't have self-service petrol stations) have radio devices that they bring to the car to swipe your debit card and for you to enter the PIN. But these are common - they use them in restaurants too - and I would have imagined they would have some security against eavesdropping.

[Squirt]

Encryption of credit card numbers is something that is taken very, very seriously by the companies that deal with it - I'd be utterly astounded if the hardware sent un-encoded data about, unless it had been purposely interfered with to do so.

[Muadan]

I have done the electrical wiring on several gas stations that have upgraded their fuel dispensers. Every single one of them had a cable going out to each dispenser that was for the card readers and other communications, no wireless at all.

They have a system like that at the Apple store, where the employees have handheld credit card readers. I would be VERY surprised if Apple didn't encode their data!

I imagine if a gas station has the technology to have a wireless card reader like that, whoever installed the technology would have also included security measures, not left it up to the gas station manager to protect his customer's credit card information. And it would be a huge liability to the company if they didn't set up some sort of encoding system.