Simon Dean did a 14 minute break down:

Is This Australia’s Most Easily Hacked Gift Card? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBarXDL23hs

of how thieves were abusing gift cards by imaging them in stores, waiting until purchased and "holding" value, then extracting that value with a little bit of cracking bad security

▲

eek2121 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I would not have believed for a second if stores here in my location in the U.S. did not recently begin locking up gift cards in a cage. I thought the move was quite odd, until I remembered a story that I read (possibly here?) about specific types of imaging that could see the pin behind the scratch off part.

Originally I assumed it was due to customer education/fraud, however no additional signage is posted at the stores doing this. Second thought was people must think these cards are already activated, however there is tons of text stating these things are only activated at POS.

The retailers I mentioned are nationwide. However, they've only recently began to do this, and only in a few locations that I am aware of.

▲

endgame 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/

This guy purchased a gift card which turned out to be dodgy, and Apple locked his entire account. So there's definitely some kind of shenanigans possible with the current supply chain.

▲

javier2 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

For the past year, single chinese tourists have travelled around the country emptying stored of nearly any kind of gift card. Its some kind of money laundering scheme I think? So recently stores in affected areas started locking up gift cards, though its hard to stop as buying all gift cards isnt really illegal

	▲	gruez an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		>For the past year, single chinese tourists have travelled around the country emptying stored of nearly any kind of gift card. Source?
	▲	pjc50 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I wonder if that's for bypassing Chinese restrictions on getting money out of the country.