Walmart is making a change to self-checkout machines which has been dubbed a ‘chastity belt.’
The retailer has added a bright yellow ‘belt’ on top of pin pads on the machines following a surge in card skimming.
A Reddit user known as mateo360, who claims to be a Walmart employee, posted a photo of the machine captioned ‘my manager called it a chastity belt for the pin pad.’
It comes after a Reddit post featuring an image of a Walmart card reader with a similar gadget and red tape went viral.
‘I think this might be protecting the reader from people attaching skimmers,’ a Reddit user wrote.
‘If you look closely, you can see that those yellow edges are actually protruding outward, like the cover around the pin pad at an ATM,’ another person commented.
Card skimming is when someone illegally installs on a card reader or other devices to obtain someone’s personal data.
This could lead to a string of unauthorized transactions, identity theft, and counterfeit card creations.
Besides new tools, Walmart has removed self-checkout machines from some of its stores, hoping it would lessen the frequency of card skimming.
Skimming devices are usually found inserted in the