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Edit: I was thinking of a totally different gift card scam. Whoops

Gift cards should require some amount of destruction in order to get to the actual barcode… something to make tampering obvious.

The same way clothes have a little ink exploder the clerk removes… just a quick easy step that is destructive to the packaging… but still presentable when you give it to someone




The scams work by getting the victim to send the codes to the scammer. They don’t care about the physical cards.


Wait, how would this stop phone scams?


Nothing can stop that. The goal is lowering the victims / profit. How to do that, that's the question. It comes to no surprise to me poor countries (with bribed police force) try to scam rich ones.


How would this affect the profits?


Gift cards don’t have a value until you purchase them, the package is meaningless. The barcode is scanned and the value is added when the transaction is completed.


They already do? Usually I see gift cards packaged in a sealed paper envelope that and the redemption code itself is covered up with tamper evident paint.




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