Word: skimmer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Things that made my father happy: Perry Mason; any Broadway musical starring Gwen Verdon; fishing for blues with doctor cronies off Montauk, on New York's Long Island; Corona Corona cigars; a straw skimmer hat; Herman Wouk. Things that drove him up the wall: misinformation about medicine in movies or on TV; strangers calling him by his first name; my frequent playing of Screamin' Jay Hawkins' I Put a Spell on You; and me, at least before I achieved...
...cooperation of the restaurant's mortified owner, they looked around the employee dressing room. There, in an open locker, they spotted the likely culprit: a black box the size of a Palm Pilot, with a slit down the front and bits of Velcro tape on the back. Called a "skimmer," the device can read and store the data embedded within a charge card's magnetic stripe--not only the name, number and expiration date that appear on the card's face but also an invisible, encrypted verification code that is transmitted electronically from merchant to card issuer to confirm...