Re: Wlan @ bestbuy is cleartext?

From: Blue Boar (BlueBoarat_private)
Date: Wed May 01 2002 - 10:31:50 PDT

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    Another anonymously forwarded post.
    
    					BB
    
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    This is indeed what's going on, and Best Buy is not the only retailer that
    is guilty of it.  In the last two years I and others have done our own
    research and found several large retailers that use WLAN to allow their
    registers at the front of the store to talk to their main computer in the
    back to handle things like pricing (how the register knows that the
    toothpaste that was $1.99 on Saturday is now $1.50 on Sunday) as well as
    credit card processing.  At first we thought it was simply POS data to
    help keep an accurate inventory and pricing data, but soon discovered
    there was also credit card data being sent.  I've found a decent indicator
    to be the use of pricing/stocking guns with antennae, but it is not always
    a smoking gun.  When you consider that it's names like Wal-Mart and Best
    Buy, both large retailers, the benefits of making this information known
    has been a equally weighed against what said retailer would do to us in
    the courts if we made the information public.
    
    It's a good reason to use cash over the convenience of plastic.
    
    Regards,
    --------------
    



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