The $12 parking meter app got my card info last Tuesday

I pulled up to a meter in Cincinnati last Tuesday and my usual app had a different logo and a 1-star rating I had never seen before, but I was late so I punched in my card anyway. Two days later my bank flagged three charges from a gas station in another state, and it turned out the whole thing was a fake app that looked just like the real one. How do you folks check an app is legit when you are standing there with the meter running?

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mason_lopez1mo ago

Blame the app store more than yourself. Apple and Google both let junk apps slip through all the time, and a 1-star rating does not always mean scam, sometimes it just means the app is buggy or new. I have used plenty of low-rated apps that worked fine and never stole a dime, so panicking over a weird logo is not really the answer. Your card got skimmed because you typed it into something shady, sure, but that happens with legit apps too when their servers get hacked.

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