DENTON (1080 KRLD) - The Cyber Forensics Lab at the University of North Texas is helping law enforcement fight credit card skimmers.
Dr. Scott Belshaw, Director of the lab, along with his team of students have developed a user-friendly invention to detect these sneaky devices. Their device can detect the computer chips used by the skimmers, because it's getting harder for the average person to identify the skimmers' Bluetooth signals.
"It's a rectangular box," says Dr. Belshaw. "You just walk up to (the gas pump), it'll immediately give you a red screen or a green screen to tell you if (there's a skimmer) in there. It's very easy to use."
Belshaw said the crooks that install those credit card skimmers on gas pumps are getting more sophisticated, so it was important to him to use the lab's resources to develop the patent-pending scanner.
"We've got a lot of smart people here, so we try to put our heads together and figure all this stuff out," said Dr. Belshaw. "I want to serve as the place where law enforcement and businesses can come when they have an issue with these skimmers. This is just the tip of the iceburg."
