[HN Gopher] Detroit man steals 800 gallons using Bluetooth to ha...
___________________________________________________________________
Detroit man steals 800 gallons using Bluetooth to hack gas pumps at
station
Author : mikece
Score : 266 points
Date : 2023-10-03 12:47 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fox2detroit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fox2detroit.com)
| mikece wrote:
| I'm annoyed that the "sample code" hasn't been published to
| Github yet.
| zzzeek wrote:
| um holy shit, the headline is "Detroit man steals 800 gallons"
| and.... _they have not caught or identified the person who did
| this_ ???
|
| what? women can't be hacker criminals ? this is a news channel
| with real editors who we assume graduated high school and went to
| college ?
|
| to be clear, when I read "detroit man does X", I assume we are
| going to hear about the actual person, that is, they are known.
| so it's jarring to follow that headline with it flipping around
| the terminology, in the first paragraph "Detroit man" singular
| becomes "scammers" - oh it's multiple people? are they all from
| Detroit?
|
| this is why news consumers are so stupid. "facts" are some kind
| of handwavy thing for nerds
| willprice89 wrote:
| The very first sentence is horribly written:
|
| > Paying at the pump is for chumps - when you can get gas for
| free - and illegal
|
| The whole article may have been generated and then skimmed by
| the "authors".
| dools wrote:
| So THAT'S why they all say not to use phones while filling up ...
| daoboy wrote:
| Another update for the Jolly Roger's Cookbook
| shadowgovt wrote:
| They had to change the date on Cyberpunk 2077 because 2020
| arrived.
| tromp wrote:
| What good reason is there for a pump to release gas for free
| through some Bluetooth interface? This hack proves you cannot
| rely on unauthorized people not able to learn how to interface or
| guess a (default) password. Setting up a proper public key
| infrastructure so that only authorized technicians can make use
| of the feature is probably not practically or economically
| feasible. It would be better to simply not have this feature at
| all.
| bluGill wrote:
| If your job is to maintain the pump you should have a measured
| container, then you dispense 1 gallon, check that what came out
| was one gallon - if not adjust various "things" until it is.
| They then dump the gasoline back in the tank. This is carefully
| regulated and checked by the state who does random checks as
| well. (it is also possible they do other chemical checks on the
| fuel - most just trust the refinery to do everything and have
| enough turn over that the fuel is close enough to fresh but
| there might be some exception)
|
| I'm not sure if the station themselves do the above check, or
| someone else. Based on other equipment I've worked on I'd
| expect this to be done weekly by the station, but I don't
| actually know what the service intervals on a gas pump is.
| mdip wrote:
| I have no idea how this hack is done/no insider knowledge but
| reading between the lines, I suspect that they're altering the
| pump in a manner that sets the cost per gallon to zero or near-
| zero.
| wildzzz wrote:
| It could be a MITM device between the flow sensor and the
| controller. It could adjust the flow reading to read much
| less than what is actually coming out or possibly zero. The
| controller doesn't have any way to verify the number and it's
| expected that the flow can change based on the condition of
| the pump and filters so a very slow reading isn't
| unreasonable. Add Bluetooth to the device and you can turn
| the hack on or off at will so it will go unnoticed. Clearly
| this guy took so much gas that someone did notice. Steal a
| candy bar from a 7/11 every week and no one will notice,
| steal the entire candy aisle once and they definitely will.
| jscipione wrote:
| Like gas prices crime is out of control in all major American
| cities. Vote Republican to solve both problems or vote Democrat
| to make them worse. The choice is yours, but if you want to see
| who is responsible, simply look in the mirror.
| stratigos wrote:
| while im completely against theft, theft is as old as economies
| of any kind. It is utterly irresponsible for the developers of
| such software system to have no/little defensive measure or
| protection against intrusion.
|
| This is article is like saying the bank teller has some kind of
| responsibility to mitigate an armed thief emptying out the bank
| vault when the bank vault has no lock, no door, and no real form
| of security.
|
| Up until now, the technology firms which creative this software
| have pushed the responsibility of security unfairly (and, imo,
| criminally negligent) onto their customers. This article just
| represents that the respective technologists need to actually do
| their job.
| londons_explore wrote:
| This thief _was caught_ though.
|
| There may be no security on the bluetooth, but there were
| cameras and accountants who noticed a discrepancy in the sales
| figures.
|
| In a way, it's better to have 'system level security' (ie.
| auditors and CCTV) than to secure just the fuel pump - after
| all, another thief might be around the back lowering his own
| pump into the big storage tanks, bypassing the bluetooth
| entirely...
| gs17 wrote:
| > after all, another thief might be around the back lowering
| his own pump into the big storage tanks
|
| And that's apparently very common. According to the podcast I
| linked to in another comment, the deliveries are often done
| when no one is around, so the hatches to the tanks are often
| left unlocked overnight.
| Kye wrote:
| Maybe it's a Georgia thing, but I always see the ports for
| filling the tanks in front near the pumps in clear view of
| people inside the store. I think an attendant would notice
| someone with a pump where the fuel trucks usually park.
| bratgpttamer wrote:
| I wonder how much fuel a white hard hat, safety vest, and
| clipboard could net one with a service truck/van.
| ChumpGPT wrote:
| Probably using a remote.
|
| https://levtech.ro/product/universal-service-remote-control-...
|
| There is also this...
|
| https://youtu.be/Bcnjp2PESqw?si=jS3QqPWw2mboWOkS
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| My hypothesis is that the construction of gas pumps were using
| parts that have Bluetooth features that although not used by the
| pump or the station, are left in for speed and cost.
|
| There are many single board computers that have BT, WiFi, and
| other radios enabled and forgotten.
|
| For example, try to get a laptop that does _not have_ a built in
| camera. It is significantly higher price that with camera. I am
| guessing similar is happening in gas pump manufacturing.
|
| The firmware stack would also fall into the similar 'laziness'.
| "The [chip/radio/whatever] driving library is already made, why
| recompile it without the BT when it could be working right
| now"...
| ryandrake wrote:
| Just having an unused radio on the motherboard wouldn't
| necessarily be a meaningful attack surface. That radio would
| somehow have have a software path of some sort up the stack
| into the application business logic that controlled the pump.
| Unless this was something as basic as a root shell from the BT
| driver, there must be _some_ participating software in there
| somewhere.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Does anyone else think responsible disclosure of the
| vulnerability would yield less than the theft of gasoline, and
| that might be the real problem? I hate to say it, but this is a
| win for both consumers and the thieves. This is old hat hacking
| mentality. Fix it or deal with it.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Well like everything else, do not blame shoddy security, blame
| the people who discovered it.
|
| I am sure the people who did this will get hefty prison sentences
| and hefty fines. While the large companies that do all they can
| to avoid paying for expert security get a "I and disappointed in
| you" from the Government and "lets go after the small guy".
|
| I almost think we should make cracking of Large Companies Legal,
| that will force these companies to use good security practices.
|
| FWIW, I doubt this is a ma&pa gas station. In the US, in most
| cases, ma&pa stations charge more for gas and make their money
| from Auto Services. Most Stations in the US are owned by the
| large Oil Companies or other large corporations.
| ninepoints wrote:
| What a terrible take. We should also make it legal to throw
| rocks in people's windows to ensure all glass is tempered. We
| should also make it legal to steal so that all stores have
| sufficient security presence. What kind of silly logic is that?
| krisoft wrote:
| > do not blame shoddy security, blame the people who discovered
| it.
|
| They didn't just discover it but went on to exploit it on a
| semi-industrial scale. It is very hard for me to sympathise
| with them.
|
| > I am sure the people who did this will get hefty prison
| sentences and hefty fines.
|
| As they should, yes.
|
| > While the large companies that do all they can to avoid
| paying for expert security get a "I and disappointed in you"
| from the Government
|
| Why would the government be disappointed in the company
| operating the pumps? The pump company is out of fuel and money.
| That should be enough incentive for them to step up their game.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Do you also think that Large Companies should be able to hire
| their own armies and make their own laws?
|
| The entire point of living in a society is that the government
| maintains a monopoly on force, and therefore can provide
| security to it's people.
|
| If the government can't enforce its own laws, what the fuck do
| we pay taxes for?
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| The entire point of police was to socialize the costs of
| securing business properties and assets onto the taxpayer
| while calling it public safety. That's why just about the
| only thing cops are consistently decent at is intervening in
| property theft or vandalism and why the #1 type of theft is
| actually wage theft, by orders of magnitude, yet you never
| see cops raiding business owners' homes like they do for 2
| ounces of meth.
|
| I'm not even saying pro or against here, that's just the
| facts of it. Police aren't here to protect you, they've
| established in court, in fact, that they do not need to
| intervene in a situation where you're in danger. That they
| also occasionally do some good for the community (or kill
| people in cold blood for trivial offenses) is a knock on
| effect, not the purpose.
| dahfizz wrote:
| There is a world of difference between poor enforcement and
| completely legalizing theft, which is what OP was
| advocating for.
|
| Even if the police were perfectly moral and upstanding,
| relying on them to respond to an incident in real time is
| just a bad idea. But, if someone broke into my house and I
| got high res video of their face and license plate, that
| person would eventually be jailed and I would be able to
| collect damages from them. Maybe not in LA or NYC, but
| definitely where I live.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > There is a world of difference between poor enforcement
| and completely legalizing theft, which is what OP was
| advocating for.
|
| I wasn't really weighing in on the OP, I was weighing in
| on the person I replied to:
|
| > The entire point of living in a society is that the
| government maintains a monopoly on force, and therefore
| can provide security to it's people.
|
| Which is not to say that that _NEVER_ happens but it
| seems clear the monopoly on force is used as much if not
| moreso to maintain a status quo that benefits the power
| structure that wields it. "The sounds of children
| screaming have been removed" comes to mind, where police
| are in a place they are needed and resourced
| appropriately to respond and simply don't, because they
| don't have to. And the flip-side of that is, you have
| clear cut cases of people being harassed by cops because
| they're homeless, or outright killed by them for stealing
| food because they literally cannot pay for it.
|
| There is absolutely a need in society for _a police
| force,_ but our current one has demonstrated it 's
| inability to meet that need over and over.
| mminer237 wrote:
| > That's why just about the only thing cops are
| consistently decent at is intervening in property theft or
| vandalism
|
| Property theft seems like the most-ignored type of crime
| these days. Police often do little more than fill out a
| report unless the thief is still there and stole a huge
| dollar amount. They obviously prioritize violent crime much
| higher than vandalism.
|
| > the #1 type of theft is actually wage theft
|
| This is a myth. Retail theft is much higher than wage
| theft.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > Property theft seems like the most-ignored type of
| crime these days. Police often do little more than fill
| out a report unless the thief is still there and stole a
| huge dollar amount. They obviously prioritize violent
| crime much higher than vandalism.
|
| I'm not talking about what they prioritize, I'm talking
| about what actually gets solved. How many times have we
| seen someone chased down and shots fired at them for
| stealing a couple sodas or something?
|
| Meanwhile, murders, sexual assaults, nothing. Nada. And
| that's assuming that the perpetrator _wasn 't themselves
| a police officer._
|
| > This is a myth. Retail theft is much higher than wage
| theft.
|
| Not according to everything I've read on the subject:
| https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-
| problem-fo...
| jtbayly wrote:
| Trying to equate theft with writing software bugs seems like a
| bad road to go down.
| jcutrell wrote:
| Yeah lock me right up then
| johnny99k wrote:
| if you are using those bugs to steal property from a
| company/person, you should be.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| The thief is to blame .
| 1-more wrote:
| > Most Stations in the US are owned by the large Oil Companies
| or other large corporations.
|
| Quite often the oil company name is licensed and the gas
| station is independently owned. The gas station owner doesn't
| even need to buy gas exclusively from that company. I remember
| learning this when a BP gas station in Louisiana was having a
| tough time during the Deepwater Horizon leak. But I got curious
| as to how much is one way or the other
|
| As of April 2023 there are 150,174 convenience stores in the
| USA, of which 118,678 stores (79%) sell fuel. Overall,
| convenience stores sell approximately 80% of the motor fuels
| purchased in the United States. 54.6% of convenience stores are
| owned by a single store operator (so a single owner or family
| that owns just that one store).
|
| The top oil companies together own 15,400 gas stations as
| franchises:
|
| > Major oil companies have begun to reemerge on the retail
| landscape, reversing a decade-plus trend that reduced their
| share of the market to less than 0.5% by 2017. Shell Oil
| Co./Motiva Enterprises LLC, Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp.,
| BP North America and ConocoPhillips/Phillips 66 collectively
| have approximately 15,400 stores that all are franchise
| operations. Shell Oil Co./Motiva Enterprises LLC and Chevron
| own and operate stores.
|
| https://www.convenience.org/Topics/Fuels/Who-Sells-Americas-...
| bluGill wrote:
| Gasoline comes from a refinery, is shipped by truck for the
| last mile, and is carefully regulated on the state level. The
| big chains might have a specific additive mixture they want
| put in the gasoline, but all stations in an area are forced
| to buy from the same refinery as between shipping costs, and
| state regulations the cost to get from anyplace else would
| make you noncompetitive. Sometimes there is more than one
| refinery, or a second pipeline to your city - but it is still
| safe to assume that all the gasoline you buy in any one area
| all came from the same refinery.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> do not blame shoddy security, blame the people who
| discovered it_
|
| Discovering shoddy security is one thing, abusing a lax
| security to cause damages, is a completely different thing. If
| you leave your house door unlocked, that does not mean I'm now
| legally entitled to walk in and steal your shit.
|
| Also in regards to discovering weak security, there are rules
| around that. Intentional pen-testing without explicit consent
| is still a crime in most jurisdictions, as it should be.
|
| I don't have the right to pen-test all the IT systems I like,
| and start lock-picking at the doors in my neighborhood, just
| for the noble goal of testing their security, without the
| explicit permission of the owners of those systems/properties.
|
| If I accidentally enter my password in the birthday field and
| that crashes your system due to special characters, that's an
| accidental security finding I can report without repercussions,
| but that doesn't mean I can now start hammering your live
| system with port scanners and SQL-injections, just to be
| "thorough".
| gottorf wrote:
| Stealing from a big company isn't any more moral than stealing
| from a small one.
| jehb wrote:
| The headline says "Detroit man" but the article goes on to
| provide zero indication that the thief is a man or from Detroit.
| mdip wrote:
| Welcome to Southeast Michigan.
|
| For whatever reason, everyone within 25 miles of Detroit "lives
| in Detroit" even though a whole lot of us might visit the city
| less than once a year.
|
| The media will usually say "Metro Detroit" when referring to
| someone who doesn't actually live in the city[0] of Detroit and
| given the location of the gas station, it's probably an actual
| person who lives in the city.
|
| [0] In which case it could be someone living in one of three
| different counties.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Odds are its some techbro that lives in Oakland country, went
| down to some pump in Detroit where people DGAF, and did their
| exploit.
|
| Also, I just call it south east Michigan. Detroit is
| subordinate to Oakland County now. Maybe we should call it
| Oakland-Macomb for better accuracy.
| bluGill wrote:
| Either you live in Detroit or you live in the UP. Sincerely
| everyone in the US who doesn't live in Michigan.
| havblue wrote:
| I always got the impression that it's based on not wanting to
| say you're from "Detroit". You say you're from Royal Oak or
| whatever. People get confused. You hold up your palm and
| point to the lower right corner. People are still confused
| that you just pointed to Detroit...
| hinkley wrote:
| Meanwhile people living within 40 miles of Chicago 'live in
| Chicago'. Some insist on it themselves, others are put into
| that box by the rest of the Midwest.
| spread_love wrote:
| How do you fence stolen gasoline? Is there a black market for the
| stuff?
|
| Even if you got away with this, you're looking at $2000-$4000 in
| profit? Seems hardly with the risk (even if you're not concerned
| with ethics). Not to mention you have to safely store 800 gallons
| of gas somewhere.
| willprice89 wrote:
| > "They just open the pump for them automatically," said Mo,
| the gas station owner.
|
| > FOX 2: "And then cars just keep coming up and filling up?"
|
| > "Yeah they meet up with them and tell them to come over
| here," he said.
|
| It sounds like they find paying customers, then have the
| customers go get the gas from the unlocked pump. So essentially
| they are running a black market gas station within the actual
| gas station.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| I'm pretty sure, it is something like the pumps VFD, is a new
| fancy one with Bluetooth (for easy maintenance) and just the
| inital password.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Seems like a lot of effort. Thats like $3k retailer, fencing it
| will be worth less.
| ughitsaaron wrote:
| I love my hometown.
| BradDavis67 wrote:
| [flagged]
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| > _" We don't know what kind of device was used, but we know it
| was an electronic device,"_ --Detroit Police Department
| spokesperson
|
| Any other more stories other than all of these pulling from the
| Fox 2 news one?
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Is it something like this manipulation device that fools the
| "pulser" in the pump to alter the price?
|
| Couple reports over last years from Orlando, Texas etc with a
| cheap homemade device being used...
|
| https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2022/05/24/gas-pump-...
| callalex wrote:
| Good for them, we already paid for the gas through corrupt
| subsidies anyway.
| Retric wrote:
| Meanwhile your license plate is captured on camera. This is
| identical to someone hitting pay inside then driving off.
|
| Edit: Looks like pump then pay is more regional than I assumed.
| Yes it's still a thing in some parts of the US in 2023.
| rtkwe wrote:
| My memory is that pay inside was a forced prepay option? My
| entire adult driving time has been after the advent of card
| readers being on basically every gas pump so I'm going off
| vague childhood memories of going in to pay for my parents.
| gadders wrote:
| Pump then pay is the default in the UK, but card readers on
| pumps are becoming more common.
| mhandley wrote:
| And in most places, what they lose on fuel theft, they more
| than make up on sales in the petrol station shop which is
| where they really make their money, so they have little
| incentive to change.
| Retric wrote:
| Depends on the station but pump then pay is still a thing,
| but seems to be regional as this post from 2023 shows.
|
| https://www.cleverdude.com/content/4-things-you-need-to-
| know...
| jstarfish wrote:
| When I still had a motorcycle (early 2000s), I'd find a lot
| of rural stations didn't have modern tech on the pumps, and
| there were a lot of stations that still allowed pump-then-
| pay.
|
| Some stations just have shitty tech. A station near me fails
| open if you initiate a credit card transaction, take the pump
| off the hook, and then abort the transaction.
| pbmonster wrote:
| The interesting question is how often they notice, and whether
| the pump keeps logs. Because not everybody is stupid enough to
| invite their entire neighborhood to a free-for-all.
|
| Just drive up, unlock pump, fill up, lock pump, leave.
|
| I would not be surprised if the pump doesn't have a time-
| stamped log of Bluetooth service function calls. And even if it
| does, how long can you run this scam before they notice missing
| inventory from their underground tanks? How long do they keep
| CCTV footage?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Like most crimes, that seems like a lot of assumptions to
| risk a felony charge
| brookst wrote:
| It's possible that, like a lot of criminals, the decision
| to proceed was not based on a complete and well-formed risk
| analysis.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| of course, but I'm responding to a risk analysis
| ethbr1 wrote:
| They could correlate by absence of a matching receipt.
|
| Strip out every timestamp correlated with a sale.
|
| Strip out no object at a pump.
|
| Scan through the remainder.
| pbmonster wrote:
| You're talking about running image detection on the video
| footage and correlate with payment system receipts?
|
| You could probably hack that together in python in 15
| minutes, but I doubt there's commercial software offering
| that functionality. Which means nobody (outside a digital
| forensics firm) is doing that, and certainly not for $60
| worth of gas.
|
| And still, that requires the station even noticing missing
| inventory. I really wonder how long people have been using
| that hack, you'd probably check for leaks in the
| underground tank before checking whether your pumps have
| been compromised...
| dylan604 wrote:
| >You're talking about running image detection on the
| video footage and correlate with payment system receipts?
|
| Or, do what has been done since the beginning of video
| recordings used in investigations...have a human sit in
| front of the screen scanning the footage.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| You are potentially paying a human to watch mutple days
| of video footage to detect $60 of gas. Even at minimum
| wage, that could be a loss.
|
| And then you find out the car was a white Toyota corolla
| and it's missing a number plate, now what?
| dylan604 wrote:
| You're advocating paying a dev at a significantly much
| higher hourly rate to develop something that will find
| Ryan Gosling stole the gas from Santa's sleigh with a
| pattern of snakes painted on it. Now what?
| bluGill wrote:
| If you can make such a program in 1 week there are plenty
| of franchises willing to pay for it. It doesn't have to
| be very good, even if 50% of what you show is a false
| positive and you only catch 20% of all crimes you say
| that is still more than enough for a human to look
| through everything you flag and get the police involved.
| While it probably directly costs more than eating the
| loss from these crimes, you only need to catch a few
| cases to be worth it.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Meanwhile your license plate is captured on camera
|
| If the thieves are going to such lengths as to hack the pumps,
| they're likely taking the 60 seconds necessary to tape over
| their license plate.
|
| This is an extreme premeditated attack, not someone running off
| with gas on a whim.
| sethhochberg wrote:
| Hell, if you're doing it all with Bluetooth anyways, get one
| of those electronic license plate cover devices that have
| become a plague with all of the worst drivers in every town
| who try and avoid tolls and red light cameras...
| adolph wrote:
| That sounds expensive/complicated compared to the
| ubiquitous paper plate.
|
| How Texas Paper Tags Became a $200M Criminal Enterprise:
| https://www.nbcdfw.com/investigations/how-texas-paper-
| tags-b...
| pierat wrote:
| Holy shit, you weren't joking. Search Scamazon for "license
| plate flipper"
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Universal-Electric-Rust-Proof-
| Weather...
|
| Verified Purchaser: "I like that I don't have to pay for
| tolls"
| c22 wrote:
| Around here I've been noticing an alarming number of vehicles
| being driven around with deeply expired tabs, dubious bits of
| paper tacked in the license plate area, or frequently no plates
| at all ever since the pandemic. Depending on where you live
| this just might not be enforced very much at the moment.
| coin wrote:
| > Meanwhile your license plate is captured on camera
|
| Depends on if local police and district attorneys actually acts
| on it
| Mister_Snuggles wrote:
| In Alberta, it's required by law to pay before you pump. This
| happened after an attendant was killed during a gas-and-dash
| robbery.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Edit: Looks like pump then pay is more regional than I
| assumed.
|
| The only place I have ever seen the requirement to pay first
| was in some tourist resorts in Spain, I guess to prevent theft.
| Weirdest thing ever, it's like....lady I have no idea how much
| fuel this rental car will take, how can I possibly prepay you.
| adra wrote:
| All the credit cards have a reserved amount they can pre-
| allocate so that once the final bill is due, you're required
| to pay at most X dollars (the max that you chose at the
| pump). It's fraud proof. Like it or not, it'll likely be
| deployed everywhere eventually because it should be able to
| cut down on fraudulent purchases significantly.
| gambiting wrote:
| ....is it common that people fill up and drive away without
| paying where you live? I have literally never heard of that
| happening, ever - I guess if you tried you wouldn't get
| very far, police would be called and they'd find you
| quickly with the reg plate.
| bluGill wrote:
| What do you mean by common. The vast majority of people
| do not do this every. However even in the best areas
| someone will do it (I'm guessing a few times per month).
| In really bad areas it happens several times per hour.
| Generally the police are good at finding who did it when
| this happens, but only if the station notices in the
| first place - they don't always.
| mikece wrote:
| Except that hitting "Pay Inside" probably activates the "get
| high res photos" function because that's a known fraud profile.
| If the pump is tricked into giving gasoline for free how long
| does it take for the gas station employee(s) to notice
| something went wrong?
| jjkaczor wrote:
| Interesting - in Canada, if you want to "Pay Inside", you
| have to go in and actually pay - they authorize the maximum
| transaction, and it unlocks the pump and sets it to a maximum
| amount. If you pump less than that amount, you pay only for
| what you use. But, OTOH - Canada seems a bit ahead of the US
| when it comes to Interac/debit-card transactions in general
| (... but also a little "behind" Europe and AU/NZ...)
| ajford wrote:
| That was normal in Texas ~15-20yrs ago. But in the
| intervening time, I've seen that become less common. I've
| run into places that won't let you pay after and will
| instead just ask you to prepay (full transaction) and come
| back in to get the difference refunded.
|
| But I've also ran into plenty of places that if you hit
| "pay inside" on the pump will simply just turn the pump on,
| or will call you via the pump intercom (is that common
| everywhere?) and tell you they're turning the pump on for a
| max of XX gallons and to prepay or use the card at the pump
| if that's not enough.
| bluGill wrote:
| The pump intercom is done because then you know someone
| inside actually saw you and is expecting you. If you
| drive off without paying they are much more likely to
| notice and call the police in time for the police to
| catch you. Or at least that is what they want you to
| think.
| ajford wrote:
| Yeah, I figured the intercom call was to get you thinking
| that they're watching closely, even though they're
| usually too busy with other customers to really be
| watching someone on the chance they drive off.
| mikece wrote:
| A lot of places in the US are either pay by credit card at
| the pump or pre-pay inside only. I've also seen where "pay
| inside after" only works if you leave your driver's license
| with the attendant inside before the pump is activated.
| Loughla wrote:
| Most rural areas away from interstate highways can still
| pay after you've pumped, without needing to leave your
| license or anything else.
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| Huh, interesting.. the usual default in most of Europe is
| pump then pay, with nothing required beforehand, they
| have your license plate on video anyway?
| salad-tycoon wrote:
| It used to be like this in the US too. Now we have
| "upgraded customer interactive digital displays" that
| stream ads, TikTok, "cheddar news" , and propaganda into
| your brain while you pump and I haven't seen a pump then
| pay in some years.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| Side note: If you're at a pump with those stupid TV
| things, try and hit...right side, second button from the
| top. This _usually_ activates mute. Some people go to the
| effort of putting little stickers indicating where the
| mute button is. Other times you can tell which one it is
| if the button is heavily scuffed. If that button doesn 't
| work, just try pressing each of the other ones on there.
| In my own experience, it doesn't hurt to try. I think one
| time the left side, bottom button worked too.
|
| Whatever the case, I find those infernal things to not
| only be obnoxious, but a potential safety risk. I mean,
| you have a customer literally in the process of handling
| large quantities of dangerous, liquid flammable material
| which emits fumes that can be ignited by a spark, with
| potentially inadequate controls in place to stop it
| killing people. So, let's distract them with shrill,
| unwanted blather-boxes showing distracting imagery. I
| make a point of trying to avoid gas stations that have
| those stupid things installed precisely for that reason -
| I don't trust that location to put my safety above them
| making $.0002 from some shady ad network.
|
| I just can't stand that there is such a concerted effort
| for this war on silence. Just give me a few minutes of
| simple contemplation.
| mindslight wrote:
| It would be better to put some tape over the speaker
| grille to cut the volume by a good amount, since it would
| help the next person and generally improve the place.
| Hostile defaults and having to repeatedly do some action
| to "opt out" means the shitheads essentially still win
| modulo an illusion of choice, like so many modern
| dynamics.
| salad-tycoon wrote:
| While I fully support this if user hostile then hostile
| user idea, I remembering hearing stories about people
| putting Biden stickers on pumps getting charged with
| crimes. Apparently any sticker or even magnet could be
| argued to be an attempt at changing its pumping
| mechanism. So maybe just be discrete.
| mindslight wrote:
| There's always the possibility of malicious
| arrest/charging/prosecuting when bucking the
| authoritarian order of just accepting that it's proper
| and just for shit to be rolled downhill. Funny how
| there's never any charges against hostile pump owners for
| assault, disturbing the peace, possible stalking [0],
| etc. The answer is to be aware of the vanishingly small
| possible downside, do it regardless, and then be
| personable to mitigate the damage if you do end up
| drawing aggro.
|
| (Not that anti or pro Biden stickers terribly upset that
| status quo. The problem is having upset the wrong person
| with a modicum of power)
|
| [0] If the nuisance pump is tied into the commercial
| surveillance databases for choosing what content to
| blast. I've no idea if we're there yet.
| ajford wrote:
| Just a personal anecdote, but miss-timing your button-
| press sometimes results in a car-wash being added to your
| pump charge.
|
| I was trying to hit skip or cancel or something (this was
| in the Before Times, barely remember what it was asking)
| and what was the skip button became the "Yes, I'd like a
| car wash" button as the next ad started. I always
| suspected this was a bit of Dark UI level trickery, but
| could also have just been unfortunate button selection
| between two separate ads.
|
| Since then, I just avoid those buttons when ads are
| playing lest they get me again!
| willcipriano wrote:
| You can't buy a toothbrush without calling a attendant
| where I live, no way they let you pump $100 of gas
| without paying first. Pay after was the norm when I was a
| kid though.
| opello wrote:
| I recently learned that you can mute some of these! I've
| had success with the top right or second from the top on
| the right button near the screen. No reason not to try
| them all if you're a captive audience anyway...
| fuzzzerd wrote:
| I spam all the buttons on any pump to attempt to mute it,
| and like you have had success with top right, or second
| from top on the right having the highest success. In my
| area, I'm only about 1/4 in being able to mute it, but
| when it works, usually top right.
| olyjohn wrote:
| I wonder if I could just get a powerful electromagnet and
| use it to rip the coil out of the speaker. Would be a
| benefit to society.
| soco wrote:
| Unattended/night stations still work like this: you pre-
| authorize your card then pump to get charged.
| complianceowl wrote:
| This comment is kind of confusing; maybe others have had a
| different experience, but I live in the Midwest and what
| you're speaking of has been the norm for like the last
| decade. I've been driving for 13+ years and don't have any
| memories of being able to pump gas without first paying at
| the pump, or paying inside and my pump automatically
| stopping at the amount I paid for.
| bluGill wrote:
| I starting driving in 1990 - back then there was no pay
| at the pump so the norm everywhere was to pump gas then
| go inside and wait in line to pay. You knew you were in a
| bad neighborhood if you had to pay for your gas before
| you pumped it (you probably already knew you were in a
| bad neighborhood, but this confirmed it). About 15 years
| ago stations started to realize that nearly everyone was
| paying at the pump even if they were going to come inside
| for something else - which made it much more likely
| anyone not paying at the pump was trying to steel
| gasoline and so they went to pay first as few were
| inconvenienced.
|
| I do not miss at all standing in line behind someone who
| couldn't figure out which lottery ticket they wanted to
| buy.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _in Canada, if you want to "Pay Inside", you have to go
| in and actually pay - they authorize the maximum
| transaction, and it unlocks the pump and sets it to a
| maximum amount. _
|
| I'm in a good-sized city, and every gas station I've been
| to lets you pay inside _after_ filling up. The only ones
| that require pre-pay (either by going inside as you
| described, paying for a max amount, or by CC) are the
| farthest pumps away from the store.
| [deleted]
| aceofspades19 wrote:
| I'm in Canada and I have never seen a pump or gas station
| in the last 10+ years that allow you to pay after filling
| up. I had thought all the stations have changed since
| incidents like this:
| https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/attendant-
| drag...
| ziddoap wrote:
| Perhaps only BC made the switch? Not sure. But I filled
| up this morning and paid after the fact at PetroCan, so
| it's definitely not a Canada-wide thing.
| pizzaknife wrote:
| this is insane to me. I have not been to a single station
| in the continental united states in the last 7 years
| where "pay inside" does not equate to "pay first"
|
| That being said - perhaps its an "attendant" state?
| Several states have laws which restrict motorists from
| pumping their own gas, is this the scenario which you are
| talking to?
|
| edit: grammar
| pests wrote:
| > Several states have laws which restrict motorists from
| pumping their own gas
|
| Just one now. Oregon just starting allowing it last month
| so New Jersey is the only one left.
| matsemann wrote:
| Laws saying you can't pump your own gas? Having to prepay
| inside? Wow, I'm flabbergasted, and it's a bit funny
| you're thinking it's insane the other way around. I guess
| it's what you're used to.
|
| When tanking before paying, I also used to get into the
| car and move it so that someone else could fill while I
| was inside(it would start a new transaction when you put
| the nossle back), probably to you look like a dash from
| the bill. Then walk inside saying "hundred and fifty
| something on pump 3 is mine".
|
| But I haven't seen a pump not accepting card in what, 20
| years, here? So haven't used anything else for ages (and
| now got an electric car anyways)
| ziddoap wrote:
| I'm in Canada, not the US. But no, no attendant.
|
| You fill up for $X, then walk into the store and say "I
| filled up on pump 3", then you pay.
| pizzaknife wrote:
| thank you! This pattern essentially disappeared from the
| US with the exception of perhaps the very smallest and
| remote locations (public accessible) seemingly since the
| late 1990s (I do remember this pattern as you have
| described, just not in the last 20years)
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| As an American living in Canada: that's exactly how it
| works on both sides of the border.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| It's more efficient to pay after you've completely filled
| your tank. I guess there is a trust issue, which is why it
| isn't common in the US anymore.
| salawat wrote:
| Nope! It's actually because there's a financial standard
| transaction flow for things like pumps!
|
| -Confirm account: super small test move to confirm
| liveness of endpoint
|
| -Place hold: (locks $75 worth of funds attached to an
| account) Finalize transaction
|
| -Finalize transaction for final amount
|
| -Release hold
|
| This is actually a _really_ troublesome thing for people
| who have trouble keeping their account balances positive,
| because you can end up locking them out of further
| financial activity until the hold is expired /released.
|
| It's one of those things you don't really think about but
| are all over the place, and are a big part of making the
| world turn the way it does.
| sethhochberg wrote:
| Similar problem for people this close to the financial
| edge: saying "I want exactly $23.46 worth of gas" because
| thats all the cash they have, a penny more wouldn't fly.
| Much easier and safer to ask the attendant to preload the
| pump with that amount and run it down to zero than to try
| and get as close as you can with the trigger without
| going over.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Presumably they find out within a week when they reorder gas
| and the filling truck has to fill substantially more than
| expected.
|
| They probably start investigating for a fuel leak, pull the
| data from all the pumps, and then realise the number of
| gallons pumped and the number of gallons paid for don't match
| up, and then check the CCTV.
| djtango wrote:
| Depends really. Most businesses will assume some amount of
| shrinkage. If you fly beneath the radar eg only hit the
| station once a month or every other month. You might get
| away with it.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Completely agree.
|
| Also, volume is huge.
|
| If a gas station averages 1 car at all times across a
| month, you're talking 400,000+ gal. Even just 1 hour of
| pumping each day is 18,000 gal.
|
| Are they really going to bother if one person swipes 20
| gal a month?
| brookst wrote:
| Not to mention the margin of error. Do fuel delivery
| quantities really exactly align with sold gas, to within
| a gallon or so? Or is there natural variation from each
| transaction being +/- $0.01, plus evaporation, plus any
| other rounding/physics considerations?
| jareklupinski wrote:
| > Most businesses will assume some amount of shrinkage
|
| in the gas trade, they use the term "evaporation" ;P
| jacquesm wrote:
| Here in NL it's 'pay inside' or 'pump then pay' by default
| unless you're in a border region where there are a lot of
| scammers. And judging by some recent foreign trips pretty
| much the same happens in other countries in the North of
| Europe.
| Retric wrote:
| Yea it's less automated but this bit: "when the clerks inside
| try to stop it - they can't." suggests it's very obvious.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Last week I had some idle time, and I was looking up whether
| they sold multi-color e-ink displays in a 6"x12" size.
|
| My state doesn't even emboss plates anymore. If I did mount one
| and kept my real tag number on it, could anyone even tell? I'm
| boring as shit, so I don't know why I'd have a James Bond
| gadget on my car...
|
| > Looks like pump then pay is more regional than I assumed. Yes
| it's still a thing in some parts of the US in 2023.
|
| I haven't seen this in forever. Even the shitty little gas
| stations where I grew up, I thought those were all upgraded
| ages ago. The EPA tends to frown on tanks that have been in the
| ground a long time, and since that's the biggest cost, they
| tend to get the electronics upgraded too so that it's pay at
| the pump. No idea why anyone with cash wouldn't be forced to
| pay first.
| yomlica8 wrote:
| There was a post on here where some one mentioned a lot of
| people just install bike racks to block the plate and said
| Amazon sells lots of plate hiding stuff. I'd definitely seen
| plastic covers that obviously made the plate very hard to
| read in the wild but I'd never really thought about using
| different kinds of luggage racks to obscure plates.
|
| Of course, my state used a bunch of bad paint on license
| plates for a number of years so you could just peel off all
| the paint removing any contrast from a legit plate and you'd
| look no different than most people's unreadable plates
| anyway.
| Retric wrote:
| Which is all well and good until someone aims a camera to
| capture the VIN number near your drivers side dash.
|
| That's the thing it's easy to say something is a perfect
| crime, it's harder to prove.
| behringer wrote:
| In my state they sure as heck don't let you pay after pumping!
| That's only really a thing in small towns
| [deleted]
| pard68 wrote:
| Same man. I don't know of a single pump within 40 miles of me
| that even has a card reader. It's all pump-then-pay.
| ziddoap wrote:
| It's not exactly difficult to obfuscate a license plate for the
| few minutes needed to fill up.
| olzhas wrote:
| 3028.33L
| londons_explore wrote:
| If that's all in one vehicle, this guy either drives a massive
| tractor or the fraud has been going on for years.
| notpushkin wrote:
| It's in his vehicle plus everybody who went in for free gas
| after them. He didn't lock up the pump afterwards.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Sounds like a social media thing. He does it somewhere and
| tells folks about it because they start lining up there.
| Modern day Robin Hood, kinda.
| bluGill wrote:
| That is only 16000 miles at 20mpg. The average American
| drives 12000 miles per year. It isn't clear over what time
| period this was done over, but it is only a bit over average
| if this is in a year.
|
| The article seems to imply per incidence, but even then you
| only need 50 friends. Or you can cover you tracks just by
| making the change, then letting an hour go by before going to
| fill you tank - making it seem like you were one of the lucky
| ones to get the cheap fuel.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Just read the article.
| jan_Sate wrote:
| That's exactly why it's a bad idea to use IoT on everything! Most
| companies working on this kind of product doesn't give a shit
| about security.
| mdip wrote:
| You're mostly right. I think several _do_ give a shit about
| security but they both lack the knowledge of what it takes to
| reasonably secure something like this and are somewhat
| powerless /misled into believing they don't need to care.
|
| The first problem is that companies that add wireless/IoT
| capabilities to devices have nothing to do with their
| implementation/security beyond writing a cheque. I used to work
| for a company that created IoT devices for _huge_ brands[0].
| They make a toothbrush, a lightbulb or a vacuum cleaner. They
| 're good at _that_ , but they bring in someone else to either
| "wholesale create an IoT product" or collaborate on its
| creation where the "IoT pieces" (and their security) were
| farmed out to us.
|
| Of course, _we_ didn 't have much to do with the creation of
| the product, either. We (frequently) used a white-label Chinese
| product -- often, but not always, explicitly chosen by the
| manufacturer. In fact, the large brands often _insist_ on a
| specific Chinese provider for long-term maintenance /cost
| savings[1].
|
| We receive a "dev board" and device that consists of an
| ESP8266/ESP32 bolted onto whatever it's IoT-ing, and a cloud
| service (hosted in the country of origin; almost always China).
| The developers involved write a mobile app and some firmware
| that interacts with the cloud web service -- which we have no
| control over/cannot work around or suggest additional security
| layers -- and we integrate it. It creates an impenetrable SEP
| field[2].
|
| Companies who care about security care about it up to some
| industry defined standard that has some form of acronym (the
| names of which escape me these days) which involve, basically,
| filling out a form or two attesting (truthfully) to the
| requirements but that serve only to shield those involved in
| the process from responsibility beyond whatever the acronym-
| defining organization thinks to ask. It involved passing a lot
| of those questions off to the third-party who runs the cloud
| service, who -- surprise, surprise -- know what boxes to check
| to receive payment.
|
| [0] I love my former employer so I'm leaving the brands off,
| but at least one product involved was popular enough that my
| parents received one as a gift for Christmas ... it was fun
| explaining that some code I had written was running on their
| phone.
|
| [1] The pattern (one that we didn't advocate) went "hire us to
| build the initial, user-friendly, polished version of the app"
| then pass it onto said OEM to maintain/update it between
| hardware versions. To the extent that the _first_ version could
| be secured, it is (until it 's not). They don't trust the OEM
| to write the initial version, but once it's out there,
| augmenting it costs 1/10th the price and that's about all their
| willing to pay after the initial product is created.
|
| [2] Someone Else's Problem (Douglas Adams -- Hitchhiker's Guide
| to the Galaxy).
| Aurornis wrote:
| I doubt it's IoT anything.
|
| It's more likely that someone left a Bluetooth interface open
| on the service/control interface. Could be even be something
| used for normal service operations that wasn't properly
| secured.
| ChrisClark wrote:
| IoT, the S stands for security.
| checker wrote:
| And the I stands for Internet. I guess we're considering
| local BT networks to be "the internet" now.
|
| Perhaps the BT connection bridged the device to the internet,
| but we have no indication of that and the internet was used
| as the vector. It could have been a local wireless software
| update interface so maintenance doesn't have to open up each
| pump to apply the patch.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Just nice to see it used against someone other than the little
| people for once
| networkchad wrote:
| Most of these stations are owner-operated. They usually
| aren't owned by BigCo.
| mdip wrote:
| I used to know a family who ran a gas station in my city. I
| was surprised to learn they made almost nothing from the sale
| of fuel. The actual profit -- to them -- was in the
| convenience store goods they sold.
|
| I'm not sure who eats the cost of the theft, but I'm guessing
| it's the same people that make almost no money from the sale
| of the fuel. These were not wealthy people; they were working
| obscene hours and barely scraping by.
| gs17 wrote:
| For anyone interested, Freakonomics has an "Economics of
| Everyday Things" podcast with a good episode on gas
| stations: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/gas-stations/
|
| They said they get $0.30 per gallon which mostly goes
| toward the other overhead, leaving $0.07 of profit per
| gallon.
| [deleted]
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| Super nice to see. I am so looking forward to living in a
| society that continues to devolve to the point that thievery
| is generally accepted. Oh btw, give me your wallet
| tgv wrote:
| The thought behind it might be: perhaps now someone with
| influence will pay attention. At least, that was my
| interpretation.
| thsksbd wrote:
| I understand you're sentiment, however, never mind the fact
| that gas station owners are barely scraping by, theft is
| theft. We cannot win by debating ourselves because instead of
| dismantling the security state (that's what iot is), the
| result will be a doubling down (secure iot, install
| backdoors, take registration, etc)
| jacquesm wrote:
| Gas stations - especially in rural areas - are usually
| hanging by a very thin thread and if they go bust they leave
| the area underserved. I don't know what your definition for
| 'little people' is but gas station owners would definitely
| qualify in my reading of that term. They tend to make less
| than minimum wage. If they make any money at all it is
| usually from store items, and that's one of the reasons 'pump
| then pay' is a thing in those places, it is an attempt to get
| the customer into the store.
| huytersd wrote:
| It's stealing from gas pump owners who are still very much
| the little people.
| mattgeo_j wrote:
| Last I heard, gas station "owners" make such a minuscule
| amount of money from the gas pumps and really rely on what
| they sell
| gottorf wrote:
| Barely making a profit on gas sales doesn't mean you're
| OK losing $3,000 of gas.
| quesera wrote:
| It's actually worse.
|
| Having a zero-margin product stolen, means that your loss
| is 100% of the sale price.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| Depends on if it is a direct corporate owned location, or
| franchised - but yes, I would argue that it hits many of
| the average small/medium business owners.
|
| Things will be "interesting" over the next 10-20 with the
| switch to electrification - yet another entire sector that
| may no longer be viable for small/medium independent
| owners. (but, time marches on - we don't see many people
| lamenting the "buggy whip manufacturers" from days of old)
| asynchronous wrote:
| I actually think electric is one thing that could be
| squarely profitable for the small guy- think a small lot
| with solar panels or micro hydro and a few charging
| stations invested for much less than the cost of a house.
| greendave wrote:
| People often have an unrealistic notion of what solar can
| do. A single 50kW charger would require 125 400w panels
| minimum - around 3000 square feet of area - and still
| only be able to provide max current for a few hours of
| the day. And 50kW is still slower than most people will
| tolerate if they're not at home/work.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Fast chargers pull huge amounts of electricity requiring
| significant electrical connections and infrastructure
| that's pretty expensive to build up. You could provide
| level 1 or 2 chargers maybe on a DIY but even a single
| fast charger is going to need a LOT of solar and
| batteries to provide round the clock service.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| As other people mentioned, the money of owning a gas
| station comes mostly from the convenience store attached
| to it. This isn't going away, quite the opposite. "Fast"
| charging is quite slow by gas station standards, which
| means more time for the drivers to go in and shop.
| rtkwe wrote:
| If you can afford to setup a charger fast enough to bring
| people in. They're not going to stop and browse your
| candy isle for 3 hours while your low wattage level 2
| charger trickles 30 mph of charge into their batteries
| unless that's the only option available. Faster charging,
| even staying within the bounds of AC Level 2 charging,
| requires beefy connections to the electrical grid to
| support more than one or two charging points.
|
| Many places will make the transition but you'll also need
| to change your interior to dedicate more space to people
| waiting while charging.
| bluGill wrote:
| Sort of. Most people will charge at home, so there will
| be less of that style of store with chargers. Along
| highways and in busy rural areas you will still find them
| - for travelers and truckers, but overall there is less
| need.
|
| Though there is still need for a store close to home
| where I can get a bit of milk quick, my morning donuts,
| and all the other things. I hope such stores move closer
| to where people live - suburban people should experience
| the big city convenience of walking to such places and
| when they don't have a hope of competing for drivers they
| may as well move closer to where people live. (if zoning
| allows!)
| prmoustache wrote:
| Some would argue they are complicit of a giant crime
| against humanity and environment.
| gottorf wrote:
| I mean, it's not like the thieves were stealing gas to
| put it back in the ground.
| dahfizz wrote:
| and stealing gasoline helps the situation?
| prmoustache wrote:
| Did I write that?
| gowld wrote:
| The gas station owners aren't the criminals. The people
| who built suburbs are.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| Please try to make substantive comments, not wild flames
| [deleted]
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Then they have cause to sue the bastards that sold them the
| pump equipment.
| justrealist wrote:
| Society actually works a lot better if every possible way
| to steal from your neighbor isn't considered fair game.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| At what point is it negligence on the part of the
| manufacturer?
| justrealist wrote:
| Society works better if every exploitable loophole is not
| considered a valid excuse to steal from your neighbor.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| You're talking past each other.
| justrealist wrote:
| Through, not past.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I have no idea what that means.
|
| Unless you mean "talking through" in the sense of
| teaching a lesson, because you're not. Your argument does
| not invalidate what they are saying, or bring any notable
| information to light. You merely started a waste-of-time
| tangent. Theft bad, everyone knows that.
| justrealist wrote:
| They are are trying to weaken the societal obligation of
| not stealing by punting the obligation on equipment
| manufacturers to make things hard to steal.
|
| It is cowardly and weak to abuse the legal system to
| compensate for societal problems by shifting blame onto
| easy targets. I have no interest in entertaining that
| line of reasoning.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's not punting to go after negligence. And saying the
| _goal_ is to weaken obligations against stealing, not
| even a _side effect_? You 're throwing up quite a
| strawman there.
|
| And a manufacturer is not an "easy target" at all. If
| suing a big manufacturer is easy in some circumstance, it
| means they screwed up badly.
| justrealist wrote:
| It's shifting responsibility.
|
| And yes, it is an easy target, because the goal is to
| find someone to yell at; nobody cares about winning
| lawsuits. It's about DAs finding a scapegoat to yell at,
| to avoid the fact that they have failed to disincentivize
| crime.
|
| It's not negligence because nobody should be under any
| obligation to defend their property against theft. It's
| the job of the state to punish crime.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > It's shifting responsibility.
|
| If you design a dispenser that dispenses at the wrong
| time, you have some responsibility.
|
| > And yes, it is an easy target, because the goal is to
| find someone to yell at; nobody cares about winning
| lawsuits.
|
| If you're not going to win, you lose even more money. Why
| would you file it?
|
| > It's about DAs finding a scapegoat to yell at,
|
| That has nothing to do with lawsuits.
|
| > to avoid the fact that they have failed to
| disincentivize crime.
|
| It's not possible to go after every little thing.
|
| > It's not negligence because nobody should be under any
| obligation to defend their property against theft.
|
| I'd better never have you watch my property, if you think
| there's no obligation at all to defend things.
|
| Leaving valuable items in the middle of the sidewalk is
| negligent, even though it's a crime to take it.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| Cool, so theft is morally justified depending on whom is
| being stolen from. Also, burning 800 gallons of fuel will
| release over two tons of carbon into the atmosphere, but I
| guess we just blame the oil companies for that too.
|
| This is where we are at now, the ultimate luxury, everyone
| has complete moral immunity for life for absolutely
| anything they do so long as someone else has more money
| than them, never mind if they are in the top 10% of the
| world's wealthy overall.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Seriously, it feels like all morality is situational now.
| People have no principles.
|
| Something as straightforward as "stealing is wrong"
| doesn't apply. "Stealing from people I don't like is
| fine".
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ryandrake wrote:
| Not that I agree that stealing is acceptable (it's not),
| but this is expected and what happens deep into class
| warfare when inequality skyrockets and hopelessness sets
| in. People do what they can to make a buck, and justify
| it as evening out a perceived imbalance. We should expect
| to see more and more of this as more and more economic
| gains are captured by the rich, squeezing more of the
| middle class into poverty.
| [deleted]
| gowld wrote:
| Please try to make substantive comments, not wild flames.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > everyone has complete moral immunity for life for
| absolutely anything they do so long as someone else has
| more money than them, never mind if they are in the top
| 10% of the world's wealthy overall.
|
| I've never seen anyone introduce the idea of "wealth
| absolutism". From your comment though I'm not sure if you
| would allow the bottom 10% to feel complete moral
| immunity.
| phkahler wrote:
| Is this possibly an exploit of a card skimmer installed in the
| pump? There's an article on sparkfun about REing some skimmers:
| https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/gas-pump-skimmers/all
|
| Maybe another option is to use bluetooth to replay someone else's
| card info into the pump. Extra funny if the one exploiting the
| skimmer for gas is completely different from whomever installed
| it to steal CC numbers!
| tamimio wrote:
| This article pretty much useless, where's the details about the
| hack itself, what's the protocol, is it specific to some vendors,
| among other details. Will wait until someone technical
| investigates it.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| This is why you need to not visit the same pump multiple times.
| They don't know they are being stolen from.
|
| So... fill up your car. Then leave. Then use a diff station next
| time. Rinse, repeat.
| wildzzz wrote:
| There's an added device inside the pump allowing the theft to
| take place. The Bluetooth feature allows you to disable it when
| you're done stealing gas so no one notices.
| [deleted]
| everyone wrote:
| Surely they have the license plate # on camera of every vehicle
| that took petrol without paying? Wont they all just be charged
| with thievery?
| bluGill wrote:
| They paid what they thought was the correct price. Many
| probably just swiped their card and thought it was a station
| mistake. Courts might make you pay the legitimate price for the
| fuel (which an honest person would agree to), but they won't
| call it steeling/a crime unless they can show you were the one
| who adjusted the price.
| labrador wrote:
| I absolutely hate gas pumps with screens that show
| advertisements. It seems to me those pumps are internet enabled
| to get the content for advertisements. If the hacker got into the
| pump this way I'd say it serves them right.
| mrweasel wrote:
| The article seems a little light on details. I don't expect them
| to explain exactly how it works, but is this a bug/feature in the
| pump design?
|
| If you can just roll up to the pump and communicate with it over
| Bluetooth, then I'd argue that it's a design flaw and the
| manufacturer should be held accountable as this seems like a
| gross laps in security.
| JudasGoat wrote:
| https://www.directindustry.com/prod/levtech-service-producti...
| ohduran wrote:
| yeah, I opened it just in case they explained how it's done.
| For research purposes of course.
| bgroins wrote:
| The article is poorly written. "Scammers are using cellphone's
| Bluetooth option to hack the pump - and get it for free." is
| all the detail you get. My cellphone's Bluetooth doesn't have
| that option.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| If you're on android, there's a bunch of bluetooth-serial
| apps that let you send more or less whatever raw data you
| want.
|
| On iOS, there's nrf connect. Which is slightly more limited,
| but can still do BLE. I think there's other bluetooth-serial
| apps for iphones, but apple has a stick up their butt about
| bluetooth-classic not working super good unless the other
| device has a "made for i" chip/cert in it.
|
| If either of these don't work well enough, ESP32s can be had
| for <$5 and can act as a bridge between your device and
| whatever you want to exploit.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > On iOS, there's nrf connect. Which is slightly more
| limited, but can still do BLE. I think there's other
| bluetooth-serial apps for iphones, but apple has a stick up
| their butt about bluetooth-classic not working super good
| unless the other device has a "made for i" chip/cert in it.
|
| Is BLE why "modern" iphones don't have issues with
| android/3rd party devices/accessories? I remember a long
| time ago when an iPhone meant you could only share
| bluetooth with other Apple devices. My iPhone today doesn't
| seem to be like that.
| jiscariot wrote:
| This sentence doesn't know if it's in the local paper or at a
| slam poetry reading:
|
| "Paying at the pump is for chumps - when you can get gas for
| free - and illegal, but it didn't stop a Detroit man from
| stealing almost 800 gallons of gas at the Shell at Eight Mile
| and Wyoming."
| jacamera wrote:
| I felt like I was having a stroke multiple times while
| trying to get through this article.
| pineconewarrior wrote:
| It's a local news piece so it's not meant for a technical
| audience. That's why they lead with the typical "random
| bystander" quotation.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You have to enable the DevTools, but that requires a $99
| annual fee. If you can't afford gas, it's not likely you can
| afford that fee too. So it's kind of a perfect catch-22
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Why would you have to enable devtools? Also, with just an
| unpaid icloud account, you can build, sign, and install
| apps to devices with an expiry time of one week.
| monkpit wrote:
| If you steal gas you can afford lots of things, so this
| logic doesn't really track.
|
| Also, you assume that someone wouldn't just sell the gas
| they stole, which is probably very much worth the small
| investment in tools.
| adolph wrote:
| It's better to just return it to a different gas station.
| Selling gas is more difficult than you might think
| because of rampant dilution/adulteration in the secondary
| market. Can't just go door to door saying "Hey I bought
| too much gas" or "My car only takes 93 octane" -- nobody
| trusts anyone anymore.
|
| When you make a return without a receipt you generally
| just get store credit instead of cash. If you don't need
| some chips and tallboys, you can typically sell the
| credit to someone behind the station for .3 to .4 of the
| face value. That isn't great but since the gaming
| machines only take cash its a solid way to get liquid.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| How could you return gas to a gas station? Why/how would
| they take it back, especially with no receipt?
| adolph wrote:
| Just act normal and ask for the manager. Like the parent
| comment noted "probably very much worth the small
| investment in tools." Be sure to get one of the fancy
| black rubber hoses instead of the green ones so things
| look more professional.
| spelunker wrote:
| iPhone 15 feature obviously, time to upgrade!
| Antipode wrote:
| Yes it's a clear design flaw but it's still theft. It's not
| like you're legally allowed to rob a store if the front door
| lock isn't installed properly and doesn't work.
| theultdev wrote:
| No we punish the companies now, not the thieves, see Kia and
| Hyundai.
| more_corn wrote:
| Are you really taking the side of the idiots who made a
| modern car you can Hotwire in 45s with no special tools?
| And then refused to issue a recall and fix the problem?
| mrweasel wrote:
| I think the point of the Kia and Hyundai cases is that
| customers had some expectation that the locks would
| actually provide a higher level of security than they
| actually did. Otherwise why even bother having locks?
| Saying that "stealing is illegal and we should pushing the
| thieves not the companies for failing to provide security"
| completely negates the point of having any security
| industry.
|
| If you provide a product that is intended to offer a
| certain level of security you should get punished when your
| product fails in a spectacular manor.
| vuln wrote:
| Glass breaks very easily. Locks don't matter.
| callalex wrote:
| You can start a car by breaking glass? That's even more
| impressive than the hack in the article!
| vuln wrote:
| Is an ignition a lock? How about the wiring to the
| ignition...?
|
| It would be one thing if Kia and Hyundai advertised "anti
| theft" via an immobilizer then didn't actually put one
| in. They just left it out because the company is being
| cheap. The cars being sold with this vuln are cheap. You
| get what you pay for.
| kyubey wrote:
| Stating "You get what you pay for" is a strange way to
| both blame the victims & attempt to absolve multi-billion
| dollar corporations for not including a standardized
| piece of security equipment, when you consider that every
| major manufacturer sells vehicles firmly in the same
| price bracket - up to half the price of your reported
| average (we love to forget about outliers, don't we) that
| have this equipment.
|
| Pedantry about what security was advertised or not will
| not make a compelling case. What a strange thing to try
| to argue.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Nobody even knows what an immobilizer is or how it works.
| They put key in car and go. People don't even read the
| manuals that come with the car. Most people don't even
| read signs along the freeways while they're driving.
|
| This kind of willful ignorance about cars goes so far
| that insurance companies willfully chose to insure these
| cars against theft, and claimed they had no idea that the
| cars didn't have immobilizers. And now they are suing the
| manufacturers. It's the insurance company's job to
| evaluate risk. All they had to do was read the fucking
| manual and if it didn't say something in there, ask.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's not expensive enough to be worth leaving out in
| basically any car.
|
| Basic security shouldn't be a premium feature.
| vuln wrote:
| > It's not expensive enough to be worth leaving out in
| basically any car.
|
| > Basic security shouldn't be a premium feature.
|
| That's your opinion presented as a fact.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It is, which is pretty normal for opinion posts.
|
| But your argument that this is okay is also an opinion.
| vuln wrote:
| I'm stating the manufacturer did not advertise this
| security feature, nor did any of the purchasers really
| care until their cars started getting stolen and used to
| cause mayhem.
|
| You stated a basic security feature such as an
| immobilizer should be installed by default because it's
| cheap.
|
| Am I missing something?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The implication of "it would be one thing" and "you get
| what you pay for" is that this product offering is
| acceptable. Which is an opinion.
|
| If there was no implication intended, then "it would be
| one thing if X" would be a tautology. Which wouldn't make
| sense as a post.
|
| And then in contrast, my opinion is that this product
| offering is not acceptable.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| It's the law in most countries. It is a fact, averaged
| out globally.
| anaccountforme wrote:
| Models affected by this extend well into the 30k range.
| This is not just affecting the cheapest possible vehicle
| someone can buy and we're running into people not setting
| expectations accordingly. Equally cheap vehicles from
| other manufacturers are not nearly this easy to steal,
| particularly by completely inexperienced thieves.
| vuln wrote:
| Yes 30k is cheap when the Average cost of a new car is
| 48k.
|
| https://www.moneygeek.com/insurance/auto/average-price-
| of-a-...
|
| This is even worse when vehicles from both brands have
| absolutely terrible resale value and depreciation.
| smsm42 wrote:
| 30k car is definitely not "cheap". That statistics is
| skewed by 1) high-end cars (Bill Gates walks into a bar,
| everybody's average income doubles) 2) the fact that
| people that can't afford expensive cars just buy used
| ones. That doesn't make the new ones less expensive in
| any way.
| anaccountforme wrote:
| Cheaper than the mean perhaps, but again not bottom of
| the barrel for many of these models. However, even if you
| want to keep focusing on these being 'cheap' vehicles, it
| STILL stands out in the industry as highly unusual. Even
| back in 2015, 96% of vehicles from other manufacturers
| had these devices (https://www.iihs.org/media/0e14ba17-a3
| c2-4375-8e66-081df9101...). It's a pretty easy argument
| to make that consumers would not be looking specifically
| for a feature that is near universal elsewhere. It was an
| abnormality and Hyundai/Kia will, unsurprisingly, pay for
| it in the long run.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Have you seen how to steal a Honda built between 1972 and
| 2000? You get a key from any other Honda, and jiggle it,
| and off you go.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| Weird how the level of protection the Kia and Hyundai
| locks provide change depending on whether your local law
| enforcement agencies are effectively able to deter theft?
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| To some extent, but the TikTok craze was just crashing
| it, which happened to my parents. The car made it all of
| 30 ft and they hit a tree. Honestly not sure what local
| police can do to stop that.
| turquoisevar wrote:
| This is not a zero sum game.
|
| You can punish both.
|
| Especially considering immobilizers have been mandatory in
| the EU since the '90s and cost a manufacturer less than $1.
|
| This is not some state of the art high tech high cost
| mitigation.
| sib wrote:
| Well, then I suppose you could rightfully punish the
| manufacturers for cars sold in Europe that don't have
| them. But, you should probably not punish manufacturers
| for cars sold in the US that don't have them _until you
| make it illegal to sell cars without them in the US_...
| turquoisevar wrote:
| There's the concept of negligence.
|
| If you distill it down, it essentially comes down to not
| doing things that no law explicitly requires (lest you
| end up with walls and walls of law books simply
| describing very specific matters), but can be reasonably
| expected of you to have done.
|
| What's reasonable depends from time period to time period
| and the norms that exist, nevertheless the concept
| exists.
|
| A good example would be you owning a house with a balcony
| in an unincorporated area where no law exists that sets
| requirements on structural integrity of such things.
|
| You're aware that the balcony might be a bit iffy and it
| has been decades since last it was checked out by a
| professional.
|
| You have guests over, you don't bother telling anyone to
| stay away from the balcony. Some of your guests walk
| underneath the balcony, or worse, they go out onto the
| balcony to have a smoke.
|
| The balcony collapses and your guests get injured or die.
|
| You're on the hook for negligence. Specifically
| negligence that resulted in tort in this case.
|
| Hell, in some places, depending on the prosecutors in the
| area and the laws on the books, you might even be
| criminally liable for negligent homicide.
|
| My comment on the EU and the regulations there isn't to
| imply that the laws there apply to here in the US, rather
| it's used (and could be used in real life) as a way to
| argue that the solution is inexpensive and not
| implementing it could be considered negligent because
| there is an easy solution available due to that
| regulation.
| sib wrote:
| Sure, negligence is a very useful concept.
|
| But what we're talking about here is that there are "bad
| guys" (tm) who stopped by your party and used a chain saw
| to cut the supports under the balcony, which would not
| otherwise have fallen down. But you could have prevented
| this if you had reinforced the supports with steel posts.
|
| The Kias and Hyundais didn't steal themselves. Let's put
| the blame where it lies, on the f**ing criminals.
| tnel77 wrote:
| Why not both? People shouldn't steal cars and companies
| should probably be held accountable for gross negligence.
| nekoashide wrote:
| The pump itself is the least secure piece of technology in
| existence. They keys to open them are common, the communication
| is all serial based and hasn't changed at all in 40+ years.
|
| It wasn't more than a decade ago that I was swapping 3des
| pinpads out. If you had really old pump all you needed was a
| small screw driver to stop the meters from turning after you
| popped the front panel off.
| kleiba wrote:
| _> "I wish it would go back to $1.99 - it's almost $4," said
| Tywanna Coleman._
|
| Yeah, and it's > $7.50 in the country I currently live in. So
| count yourself lucky if you live in Detroit.
| TheBigSalad wrote:
| Everyone thinks the lowest price in the past 10 years is the
| "normal" price.
| userbinator wrote:
| What are the pumps even using Bluetooth for?
|
| I suspect it might've been something like a default feature of
| the embedded PC that they didn't bother to disable, so you can
| "plug in" a BT keyboard / mouse and take control of the system.
| 34679 wrote:
| They could be keeping logs of unique identifiers to sell to
| location data brokers.
| Aurornis wrote:
| The article says thieves are connecting to the system as
| clients and manipulating settings of the pump.
|
| A data gathering system wouldn't need client connections nor
| would it realistically even be connected to the pump
| controls.
|
| They're just accessing some Bluetooth service interface for
| the pump.
| ta1243 wrote:
| I've been looking at my unifi SSID log recently, although
| most of my APs are in a secure area (there's a ring of
| steel), clearly some are close enough to the road to pick up
| a fair few cars over the previous 24 hours -- 114
| Audi_MMI_nnnn APs (and a few like "Frazer's Audi", quite a
| few "My Skoda/SEAT/VW 1234" too
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Still war driving in the 21st Century. I love it.
| c22 wrote:
| This sounds like reverse war-driving.
| xur17 wrote:
| If you buy a cheap ($20) software defined radio, you can
| listen to the TPMS sensors in cars, and use this for
| tracking.
| pizzaknife wrote:
| I both love and worry about this
| ta1243 wrote:
| Best one I saw was an SSID of "C:\\\Virus`567*76.exe"
|
| No jndi hotspots
| user_7832 wrote:
| I'm a little disappointed to see people forgot about
| little Bobby tables again :'(
| tivert wrote:
| > They could be keeping logs of unique identifiers to sell to
| location data brokers.
|
| Not to say no one did that, but it seems pretty stupid to
| integrate that into the pump itself (as well as extra
| trouble).
|
| Seems like if someone wanted to do that, it would be far
| easier to those companies to just ship a Raspberry Pi-sized
| device and bolt it to the side/top of the pump, or put it up
| in the canopy with the lights.
| spicybright wrote:
| Not wrong. Retail stores do that with wifi (and probably
| bluetooth now) all the time.
| brookst wrote:
| Is that still a thing in the era of randomized MAC
| addresses?
| gymbeaux wrote:
| On a related note, I recently went out of town and received
| several spam calls from phone numbers in that area. Some
| app on my phone seems to be selling my location data to
| these spam callers.
| asynchronous wrote:
| This seems like a likely answer.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Maybe it's the cashier's computer inside the station?
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Bluetooth does not have the range to do that.
| rtkwe wrote:
| RF range is down to how good your antennas are and the
| local environment rather than hard limits. With a good
| environment I can pretty easily get about as far away as
| pumps are from the building without losing connection.
| PHone and headsets are generally using tiny antennas to fit
| their form factor so they fall off quick.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Bluetooth is 2.45 ghz.
|
| Bluetooth(r) technology supports transmit powers from -20
| dBm (0.01 mW) to +20 dBm (100 mW).
| cozzyd wrote:
| Nothing is stopping you from using a high gain antenna
| though (well, other than regulations, but if you're
| stealing has you presumably don't care about FCC
| violations...)
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Originally you were talking about bluetooth being there
| for the cashier to work the pumps, now you're talking
| about what the thief is doing, which are two different
| things.
| cozzyd wrote:
| I probably wasn't clear... I meant perhaps they connected
| a bluetooth mouse or something to a cashier's computer
| and gave themselves free gas.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| I didn't get that at all, but that's an interesting idea.
| I'm not sure how the rest would work, you would have to
| see the screen.
|
| With a keyboard I guess you could use a sequence to pop
| up certain windows and run certain commands.
| hinkley wrote:
| And yet Bluetooth 5 claims 'up to' 240 meters.
|
| I wouldn't base a national franchise's business on what
| BT 5.0's 'up to' states, but it's not impossible that
| they would rely on at least 50 meters working. I can
| think of very few gas stations that have a separation
| from pump to cashier of more than that and most of them
| are truck stops.
| wildzzz wrote:
| Gas pump hacks in the past have been related to opening up the
| cabinet and adjusting the flow sensor to lower the sensitivity
| so that you pay for way less gas than what actually came out of
| the dispenser. These sensors have an interface between them and
| the controller so it could be possible to add some MITM device
| that can edit the flow reading to something much lower or none
| at all while gas continues to come out of the dispenser. Add
| Bluetooth to the device and you can turn it on and off at will
| so that no law-abiding citizen complains about the pump
| supposedly putting out less gas than what they need. These
| pumps aren't inspected frequently so if the replica tamper
| sticker looks good, the pump puts out the right amount during a
| state inspection, and you aren't so greedy that the owner
| notices, you might get away with the scam for a long time. 800
| gal is a lot of gas and could have easily filled tanks for at
| least 50 cars. This guy could have slowly stolen 800 gal over
| the course of a year and probably no one would have noticed.
| peteradio wrote:
| That sounds plausible but the bluetooth is barely part of
| making the scheme work, in your scenario they directly
| modified the hardware.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| This happened back in the 90's so I'm sure things have
| changed a bit since then.
|
| One of the guys I went to high school with worked the swing
| shift at a gas station in our town. The shift was 11pm-11am.
| It was a small town so the gas station rarely had any
| business after midnight. I guess the guy got bored and
| started reading all the manuals the manager had in his
| office.
|
| To this day, I'm not even sure how he did it, but he managed
| to change the price of gas/gallon on two of the four pumps
| down to 5 cents a gallon. Then he proceeded to call all his
| friends and family to come fill up for almost nothing. He
| reverted it back sometime around 5 or 6am. It took the
| station a few months to figure out what had happened, but by
| then, we both had graduated and were on to college. I
| remember running into him at a bar when I was home and he
| told me the whole story.
|
| When I worked there (before he was working the night shift) I
| remember there was a box on the floor by the cash register
| which displayed the price of gas. It had a sizable chunk of
| cables going in and out of the box, along with some buttons
| on top near the display. The manager at the time told
| explicitly not to fuck around with that box, its a federal
| crime and I will go to jail. I'm guessing the guy figured out
| how to change the price from that box.
|
| To this day, I still have no idea how he did it.
| bluGill wrote:
| The manager always has power to change the price of gas. At
| the big chains the manager is required to drive around and
| note the price of all the other stations and then apply
| that to some other formula to decide what price to mark. If
| any station doesn't everyone in town figures out where the
| low price is and that station runs out of fuel and has to
| pay for an expensive emergency delivery. This is why
| stations in the same area all have the same price.
|
| Your story is from the 1990s, just based on the state of
| technology we can assume that the pump prices were set at a
| computer inside the station that wasn't networked. The
| computer probably had a modem that called headquarters once
| a day to upload information, but the manager directly
| edited the prices when there was need to change prices.
|
| Note that the manager drives around to look at the posted
| prices on all stations around. The manager is not allowed
| to talk to the managers of each station as this would
| violate federal monopoly laws (this does happen all the
| time, but legally they cannot do it and that is policy any
| chain will have - they may or may not ignore a manager
| ignoring the law depending on if they think they would be
| caught).
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Why drive around? They could just call, pretending to be
| a random person, and ask "what is your gas price today?"
| bluGill wrote:
| Because the phone company as a log of who called who, and
| if the feds see that record they will assume illegal
| collusion. No sane franchise will allow a phone call in
| their policies as that policy is allowed in court as
| evidence they are talking to the other station. If you
| drive and write down prices that is the easiest way to
| stay legal.
|
| I'm sure gas stations do illegal collusion all the time
| in some towns. However it is illegal and so at least some
| station managers will not do it and all company policies
| will say drive.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| ... or use the GasBuddy app
| seanalltogether wrote:
| As someone who works in IOT, my guess is this is a new feature
| for servicing. Letting a technician communicate with
| appliances, machines, etc.. over bluetooth using their phones
| is becoming more and more popular and the security around these
| features is designed to be as simple as possible to avoid calls
| to tech support. Getting access could be as simple as entering
| the service companies id. It's like how heavy machinery drivers
| just leave the keys in their vehicle cause it's easier to share
| and they assume no one else will try to use it.
| bluGill wrote:
| Heavy machinery all has the same key unless the customer paid
| for the option to have different keys. Most modern stuff has
| a GPS attached and some form of cell connection: the machine
| won't start if the machine isn't in the geographical area it
| is supposed to be. If you have the key you can start
| anything.
| trackflak wrote:
| I'm not too bothered about their loss, given that gas pumps now
| have advertising screens installed. Let the ad revenue make up
| for it.
| ejb999 wrote:
| [flagged]
| megabless123 wrote:
| Their comment is more substantive than your comment.
| callalex wrote:
| An upside-down air can will typically damage a speaker without
| leaving any physical evidence behind.
| netsharc wrote:
| Hah, I'm going to make a startup that shows ads in the in-car
| display, "this gallon of fuel is brought to you by McDonald's.
| Try our new quad-cheeseburger, a drive-through is coming up 2
| miles ahead!".
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| That was a thing, they raised millions:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/4screen-in-car-marketing-
| sta...
| vel0city wrote:
| Imagine if your GPS would automatically add an extra stop at
| Starbucks in the morning and McDonald's around lunch and
| dinner time. You try and punch in directions to one grocery
| store and it reroutes you past a competitor who paid for
| placement.
| fuzzzerd wrote:
| Thanks, I hate it.
| asynchronous wrote:
| I actually enjoy the gas station ads because it brings us one
| step closer to the glorious dark future of Cyberpunk /s
| wizerdrobe wrote:
| In case anyone is unaware, those little buttons on the side of
| the screen can and usually do mute the ads. In 99% of the time
| I've tried the 2nd from the top, on the right hand side mutes
| them.
| quesera wrote:
| Literally all of the gas stations I frequent have disabled
| this feature (or made it a more complex series of button-
| presses) in the last year or so. :(
|
| That said, GP's assertion that the station can make up for
| stolen gas with ads is nonsensical and dishonest.
| trackflak wrote:
| > nonsensical and dishonest.
|
| Or what some of us refer to as 'humour'. It's worth getting
| into, a lot of people say good things.
| quesera wrote:
| Maybe. It's a common argument in other contexts, and some
| people believe it.
|
| I'm here to help.
| user3939382 wrote:
| I think it's unethical to force me to watch or hear ads
| when I'm compelled to refill my car somewhere and every
| station has these.
| quesera wrote:
| I agree with you 100%, especially because the volume is
| always turned up to 11.
|
| However, you'll get arrested for stealing gas -- so as a
| practical matter, when confronted with the situation,
| tolerating the ads is the recommended option!
| trackflak wrote:
| My desired method of muting them might require a bit more
| clean up. It may also involve a trip to the ER ward for burn
| treatments. But I would at least look back and say I enjoyed
| myself.
| vel0city wrote:
| The easiest way to no longer listen to them is to stop going
| to gas stations that use them.
| jtbayly wrote:
| If only! I've tried and given up. Nothing mutes them.
| carom wrote:
| Second button down on the right side of the screen,
| generally.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Is it actually Bluetooth, or did they get their hands on keys or
| remotes for the dispenser?
|
| The dispensers have constant real-time communication to the
| forecourt controller and the attendant inside. What are they
| showing when this "hack" happens? Are the attackers taking the
| RS485 line down (which would show the pump offline immediately
| inside) and forcing the pump to manually dispense?
|
| I'd kill to see some more actual information than this. I am not
| aware of a single pump on the market with Bluetooth right now but
| I do remember some IR-based remotes for some old Wayne pumps.
| obituary_latte wrote:
| In the article one of the attendants says "I hit stop on Pump 3
| and nothing happens" so they are at least seeing the pump is on
| and running. Whatever is happening must be either locking the
| attendant out or is leaving the attendants machine in a bad
| state with the pump running switch "on" so to speak. I wonder
| if it's actually NFC. It'd be interesting to see what a Flipper
| Zero would come up with.
| yellow_postit wrote:
| I can imagine a lot of Flipper Zero owners heading out to
| explore pumps now.
| [deleted]
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Agree, sounds like some kind of poorly-protected function has
| been discovered that's putting the pump into a "maintenance"
| or "test" mode where it will dispense fuel without a prepay
| having been completed.
| wyldfire wrote:
| > "Every time we push Pump Three stop, it wasn't doing
| anything," he said. "We have to shut off the whole pumps -
| we have emergency stops."
|
| Whew - sanity prevails! When I read the part about not
| stopping, I was a bit worried that the e-stop somehow was
| not a simple mechanical failsafe.
| jacquesm wrote:
| [flagged]
| sudofox wrote:
| Here is some info on this idiom:
| https://www.onestopenglish.com/your-english/your-english-
| idi...'.
|
| He is not being over the top.
| dylan604 wrote:
| [flagged]
| hmmstedaa wrote:
| [dead]
| morkalork wrote:
| This is a weird hill to die on (pun intended!). Idioms
| and colloquialism are the spice that make language fun
| and interesting instead of bland and clinical.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| If this is a language thing it's a neutral idiom, compare it
| with 'kill two birds with one stone' for something that deals
| with multiple issues at once or 'kill some time' to occupy
| yourself while you wait for something. If I say I'd kill for
| decent documentation I'm going to be reaching for a text
| editor rather than a rifle!
| lcfcjs wrote:
| [dead]
| nekoashide wrote:
| Bluetooth controlled? The device sure, for all we know it's
| just kicking over the dispenser. The clerk isn't looking but
| I'm sure if they look at the pump on the register it's
| counting.
|
| It's still all serial based comms, but unless the attendant is
| trained or aware they might just think someone is pumping. It
| will show up on the daily report when the dispenser report
| doesn't match the sales report.
| Kye wrote:
| I've seen people getting ready for a day of working on yards
| fill up 30 different things each on multiple trucks. The
| quantity might not stand out, and the attendant(s) might not be
| allowed to intervene if they think something looks suspicious.
| A "better to lose some money than risk losing a longtime
| customer over a mistake or an attendant getting shot playing
| hero" policy makes a lot of sense.
| Fatnino wrote:
| Most pumps I see will only dispense 75 dollars and then cut
| off. In one case it was 100 and then cut off.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| $75 at California's gas prices right now doesn't go very
| far!
| Razengan wrote:
| > _"an attendant getting shot playing hero " policy makes a
| lot of sense_
|
| In the post-apocalypse or some other lawless society perhaps
| 14 wrote:
| Here in British Columbia, Grants law was passed requiring
| all gas purchases to be prepaid after a gas station worker
| named Grant was ran over and killed as he tried to stop
| someone attempting to gas and dash. Back then gas was much
| cheaper so someone died over like $50. Doesn't need to be a
| lawless society just one where someone makes a stupid
| choice. And we have lots of stupid people out there.
| StrictDabbler wrote:
| "The Law was named for Grant De Patie, a gas station
| worker who was killed in 2005 by an underage drunken
| driver ... Grant was dragged 7.5 kilometers before his
| body was dislodged from the white Chrysler LeBaron."
| cj wrote:
| "Grant was writing down the license plate number as
| Darnell ran over him while stealing $12 worth of
| gasoline."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant%27s_Law#:~:text=Grant
| %20....
| bumby wrote:
| You understand you took that quote out of context right?
|
| I think the OP meant:
|
| > _better to lose some money than risk losing a longtime
| customer...[as a] policy makes a lot of sense_
| tshaddox wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean. It sounds like you're implying
| that in the ideal lawful society, the gas station clerk
| _is_ supposed to be the one defending the gas station
| against theft?
| sdwr wrote:
| In an ideal lawful society, a disagreement over gas won't
| escalate into a violent confrontation. So the attendent
| can intervene, because they aren't in physical danger.
| c22 wrote:
| Of course in this sort of society no one is stealing gas
| in the first place, so the attendant has no reason to
| intervene.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Yeah, if we're dismissing the possibility of direct
| physical violence with the wave of a hand, why not wave
| the hand a second time and dismiss the possibility of
| gasoline theft?
| mwigdahl wrote:
| Yes. It is part of the job requirement and the essential
| character of a good wage slave for an hourly, minimum-
| wage employee to lay down their life with joy and zeal in
| defense of their employer's profits and property.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's pretty standard policy in most retail places.
|
| Stories abound of staff at Walmart and Target being fired
| for attempting to enforce store shoplifting policies
| (https://www.ksl.com/article/14319284/4-walmart-employees-
| fir...). Broadly speaking, the risk of injury to other
| employees and customers, the risk of lawsuit if their staff
| misinterpret the law in the moment and overstep the
| authority each state gives them (a patchwork of law that
| stores are not interested in training its staff on), and
| mostly, the risk of brand harm if these stores gain a
| reputation for being a place where fights break out between
| employees and the public, _regardless of reason,_ are far
| costlier than the opportunity cost of being unable to sell
| lossage.
|
| Instead, companies just track lossage and sales, and if a
| given neighborhood proves to have too many shoplifters,
| they pull up stakes and close the store.
| anonylizard wrote:
| Its not necessarily good that they just losses happen and
| close up store.
|
| I guess it gives room for small business owners, who are
| willing to shield themselves behind bullet barriers,
| willing to defend their own property with guns, and don't
| care whatsoever about bad PR.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Not to mention that small business owners can sometimes
| change dynamics, depending on _why_ people steal.
|
| It is, sometimes, one thing if it's Susan's shop (you
| know Susan; she lives in the apartment down on the corner
| of Fourth and Mission, stealing from Susan would be like
| stealing from your own aunt) and another if it's Walmart
| (you will never meet Sam Walton in your life, or any of
| the management of that company. There isn't even a
| franchisee).
| c22 wrote:
| I think it has to get really bad before they pull the
| store (a store takes a lot of money to install).
|
| Usually they just offset the losses by raising prices.
| evanmoran wrote:
| Yes, but it's 100% that bad and they are closing stores
| because of it:
| https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/90-target-workers-be-
| displa...
| qingcharles wrote:
| The Walmart next to me closed due to rampant looting, and
| it was the only real store in a several mile radius.
|
| I was in there once and people were just taking stuff off
| the shelves and walking straight out with it like it
| wasn't shit.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That's very strange. If it's happening enough you can pay
| a cop to come stand there, can't you?
| bluGill wrote:
| They watch trends. If the store isn't making money -
| losses is only a part of this - they will not invest. The
| building and parking lot is only expected to last 20
| years or so - they will stop maintaining them to milk out
| more profit until they fall apart and then pull up shop.
| Stores that are making money get remodeled and the
| parking lot repaved.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Precisely. And when everyone knows that the commercial
| lifeblood of a town is so hinged on multiple factors
| outside people's control, well... Might as well get those
| underpants while they're still in town, right? If you
| _don 't_ steal them and then Walmart pulls up stakes next
| month anyway because it makes more sense to invest in
| Tallahassee than your poor neck of the woods, you'll just
| feel like a sucker.
| jstarfish wrote:
| My local big-box stores have taken to putting half the
| store's inventory in locked glass cabinets. Started with
| liquor, then detergent, socks, electric sawblades, car
| batteries, regular batteries, flashlights, bike parts,
| medicine, Monster drinks...if it's something you'll need
| to survive the apocalypse, it's behind glass.
|
| It's unshoppable; nobody is ever around to unlock them.
| iepathos wrote:
| Or you know... just the united states today. Gas station
| attendants get shot here without them even trying to play
| hero. At least a few every year.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| Murder rate in the UK is roughly the same. It's lowest in
| countries with low immigration rates per capita.
| Considering the lax immigration process in the US the
| crime rate is exceptionally low.
| webnrrd2k wrote:
| your statement that "the murder rate... is lowest in
| countries with low immigration rates per capita" is
| largely bullshit. Even the laziest of googling "crime and
| immigration rates per capita" shows that.
|
| At best, the relationship is weak, and not well
| understood.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| A better correlation - Lower inequality countries have
| much less violent crime.
| ed_elliott_asc wrote:
| Are you sure? I had us murder rate as about 6 per 100k
| and Uk at 11 per million so much less than us.
|
| [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-
| states/murd....
|
| [2] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/c
| rimeand....
| t-3 wrote:
| > In the post-apocalypse or some other lawless society
| perhaps > Detroit man steals 800 gallons
| > Detroit
|
| Jokes aside, it's common policy pretty much everywhere for
| cashiers and other employees who are not specifically
| security personnel to never confront shoplifters or other
| thieves, always comply with robbers, etc. Insurance covers
| material losses as long as reasonable precautions are
| taken.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Detroit has really come up in the past 5 years. I
| recommend folks visit and check it out. Motor City's
| downtown actually has decent public transit via bus and
| light rail, and it's very walkable* during the nice
| season. Lots of entertainment.
|
| * oh but watch out for bird/lime/lyft/uber scooters
| literally everywhere and everyone's drunk
| [deleted]
| rainclouds wrote:
| Detroit downtown is nice, the Lions win games, what
| alternate reality is this?
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| pendulum swings back it seems
| rootsudo wrote:
| I want to believe, but I also remember 2007-2014 $1
| houses, GM bankrupcy and such - is it really different?
| ibejoeb wrote:
| It's different, and it's not like it's without its
| problems. Of course there are still depressed
| neighborhoods, but there are a ton of development
| projects going up, lots of new restaurants, bars,
| nightlife venues, and arts and sports programming. By
| "coming up" I mean on the upswing, and you can definitely
| see the difference from a few years back.
| gitonup wrote:
| Detroit hasn't, downtown has.
|
| Downtown has improved wildly since when even when I was
| growing up near there in the 80s/90s, but people don't
| realize how large Detroit is. It's nearly 140 square
| miles. Downtown is, charitably, 2sqmi, and that's
| including all the way up to Wayne State. The light rail
| is the People Mover loop downtown plus a trolley up
| Woodward, within that range.
|
| The theft mentioned in the article occurred at 8 Mile and
| Wyoming, which is a 20 minute highway drive from Campus
| Martius in no traffic. "Clean Downtown" that happened
| when the city hosted the super bowl and other related
| efforts have very lopsidedly focused on the downtown
| area.
| henvic wrote:
| I'm really into driving and all, but I've been in Detroit
| a year ago and it sucked. The only good thing about it
| was the Henry Ford Museum and the fact that Canada is
| just across the border.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| The Henry Ford Museum isn't in Detroit...
| pests wrote:
| It's metro detroit and less than 5 minutes from Detroit
| itself.
| gs17 wrote:
| You probably don't know how it used to be (which is also
| very different from my grandfather's idea of "how it used
| to be"). I was there last year, but I was also there for
| 25 of the past 30 years and the change from when I was a
| kid is startling. "I recommend folks visit and check it
| out" is not something someone would have said about
| Detroit unironically for a long while.
| queuebert wrote:
| Exactly. That theft is only ~50 nano-Enrons. Not worth a
| life.
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| Love "Enron" as a unit of theft, haha. Did you just make
| that up?
| qingcharles wrote:
| I personally know of an incident where Walmart shelf
| stacker chased shoplifter of $5 hat out of store and got
| into a tangle with the getaway driver's car and they
| ended up in a coma for three months which apparently cost
| Walmart almost $2m in medical bills.
| SilasX wrote:
| Maybe a nitpick, but I think it would be more accurate to
| say that it has, in recent years, _become_ policy to not
| confront thieves, _even verbally and non-violently_
| because so many of them are now willing to escalate to
| lethal force on the most trivial of provocations,
| effectively giving them a heckler 's veto[1] on any
| measure except locking them up or asking the police if
| they'll find time to arrest.
|
| I know in my grocery store training c. 1998 they
| definitely told us to give verbal warnings to thieves
| that we saw what they did, but now, even that much is
| dangerous.
|
| >Insurance covers material losses as long as reasonable
| precautions are taken.
|
| No one would get insurance to cover small, regular
| losses. And even so, insurance isn't some magic pot of
| gold that restores the losses that lead to closure, it
| just means the impact is absorbed over everyone. It's
| still there.
|
| [1] Recent discussion of the concept here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37688954
| jghn wrote:
| When I worked at a grocery store in the early 90s we were
| instructed to not intervene. So the trend isn't as linear
| as you propose
| chupasaurus wrote:
| There's a video [0] back from 1984 or 1985 with a small
| up-and-coming band Metallica stealing from a store.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnPXn19Li6A
| bagels wrote:
| Napster: never forget
| SoftTalker wrote:
| "insurance" for small losses == higher prices for
| everyone. Some amount of "shrinkage" whether due to
| shoplifting, employee theft, or unknown reasons is built
| into the economics of a retail store.
| doubled112 wrote:
| Back when I was a gas station attendant, my manager made
| it very clear that if you're being robbed, the only
| correct answer was to offer them smokes and help loading
| or bagging.
|
| This was not Detroit, or even the USA. Think slightly
| North.
| CPLX wrote:
| Where did this insurance myth come from?
|
| Why do people think there's some kind of insurance that
| has anything to do with people shoplifting from a
| standard retail store?
|
| Like that's not a thing. There's insurance for
| catastrophic losses and out of the ordinary stuff but
| there's not an insurance policy that's paying for people
| stealing from gas pumps, or grabbing a TV from an
| electronic store and running out the door.
| ryathal wrote:
| It's about insuring employees, not the items. Businesses
| have insurance so that if a worker is hurt during work,
| they don't have to directly pay the related bills. That
| company will assume the risk that an employee helping a
| customer put a tv on a cart results in injury, but they
| absolutely won't assume the risk of confronting a
| potential thief.
| autoexec wrote:
| Stores like Walmart and Winn-Dixie used to take out life
| insurance policies on all their low level employees
| ("dead peasant" policies) so that every employee who died
| got them a payout anyway. I wonder if that's changed
| their policies.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| Of course it's covered. You can insure anything (with
| very few exceptions protected by law for obvious
| reasons). An individual case is likely not worth claiming
| when considering the deductible. 800 gallons might be.
| But, it can definitely be covered.
| CPLX wrote:
| You actually can't insure everything. And you definitely
| can't insure everything for less than the cost of just
| suffering the loss.
|
| There's no viable or common policies that cover run of
| the mill retail shrinkage. It's not a thing. Stores just
| have to eat it.
|
| Before you argue this point try to consider how such a
| policy could possibly work.
|
| You just total up what you think shoplifting is costing
| and tell the insurance company and they give you money?
| What business model is going on there exactly? How does
| the overall market work, where does the money come from
| that is reimbursing you for those losses?
| bluGill wrote:
| You could insure that though. The cost of the policy
| would be higher than the cost of just eating the losses,
| but there are insurance companies willing to write the
| policy if you are stupid enough to pay for it. For things
| that happen all the time you are better off self-insuring
| it - that is eating the loss - than getting a policy.
| Insurance makes sense for rare events that are high
| enough loss that you would not want to self insure. Any
| common loss you should self insure, and the same for
| small losses. Only for larger losses that are not common
| are you better off with a pool of people who also might
| have that loss but probably won't - odds are one of you
| will but not all so you all limit your costs.
| CPLX wrote:
| Yes that's my point.
|
| And since literally nobody wants a policy that _reliably
| and predictably_ costs more than not having the policy it
| 's not a thing. And since it's not a thing anyone wants
| insurers don't really have it.
|
| Yes somewhere there's like someone that might have
| something similar for sale, sort of. But the _point_ of
| the comment is that in general businesses don 't have it.
|
| I constantly see people say that retailers don't confront
| shoplifters because insurance will just cover it and it's
| not worth it. It's true they often don't, but not for
| that reason, since it's basically not ever insured short
| of a more extraordinary event.
| bluGill wrote:
| There are special insurance companies that will insure
| anything legal if you pay the price which they will
| figure out. As you say it wouldn't be cost effective, but
| it still exists if you want it anyway.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| Risk is calculated on a per incident basis. Deductibles
| prevent frivolous claims. It's pretty simple really.
| There's no need to downvote just because you don't
| understand something. That's just petty.
| CPLX wrote:
| You can't insure repeated ordinary course of business
| losses that you have almost total control over and are a
| core part of your business function.
|
| You didn't answer my question because it's impossible to
| come up with a reasonable answer.
|
| In insurance the cost of losses is borne by people who
| did not suffer loss.
|
| So the cost of your car crash is borne by someone who
| didn't have a crash. But they're OK with it because they
| don't know if and when it'll happen to them. And an
| accident is a major loss, so they'd rather pay a little
| every month to avoid the uncertainty.
|
| But shoplifting is a week in and week out thing. If you
| have a shoplifting policy that's reliably more expensive
| than the shoplifting why would you keep it?
|
| You wouldn't because it's not a thing.
|
| You can insure for major losses, robberies and burglaries
| and so on. But no retail stores can't and don't insure
| for things like someone driving off with a tank of gas,
| or pocketing an iPad, or a steak, or something. It's not
| an insurable risk.
| otteromkram wrote:
| If you make a claim, then your rates can go up because
| you're now a higher risk.
|
| This is one aspect of insurance aimed at discouraging
| fraud.
| CPLX wrote:
| It has nothing to do with fraud.
|
| Even if every business is completely and scrupulously
| honest this kind of insurance policy is completely
| unworkable because it's not an insurable risk, it's just
| a cost of doing business.
|
| It's like trying to buy insurance to cover your monthly
| cost of airline travel. Like it's not a thing, that
| doesn't make sense.
| bratgpttamer wrote:
| This is SOP among most chain stores' loss prevention
| policies.
|
| Sub out "not worth an employees' life" with "not worth an
| expensive assault/false imprisonment lawsuit" if you're
| extra cynical.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Maybe fear of litigation from a liability lawsuit if the
| employee is injured or killed.
| rmilejczz wrote:
| Or Florida
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| You can't honestly feel the attendant should run out there
| and try and stop a thief. You just can't.
| hollander wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post nationalistic flamebait. It leads to
| nationalistic flamewars, which are nasty and avoidable.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| mmd45 wrote:
| maybe its an nfc hack. pretty scary how wide open it is/was:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV76vObO2IM
| Affric wrote:
| If the attack were better understood by people who didn't
| perform the hack then it wouldn't have happened.
|
| I don't think any engineer in the last 20 years would put IR on
| the thing. At the same time I wonder "who would put Bluetooth
| on the embedded controller for such a machine?"
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