The origin
Safe Signals LLC was founded by Joe Gilkey, who spent more than five years as Head of IT at King Kullen Grocery Co., Inc. — one of the largest independent grocery chains in the United States. In that role, Joe had direct responsibility for payment terminal infrastructure across all retail locations.
He saw skimming attacks happen firsthand. He saw the angry customers, and the quiet reality that by the time anyone noticed, hundreds of cards had already been compromised. And he was frustrated by a simple fact: the only detection method available was asking employees to visually inspect terminals — a method that is fundamentally inadequate against skimming hardware designed to be invisible.
Skimming devices communicate wirelessly. They announce themselves via Bluetooth and RF to exfiltrate stolen card data. The signals were there. Nobody was listening for them.
The thesis
Safe Signals is built on a single observation: wireless technology is dramatically underutilized as a real-time safety tool. Most safety systems are reactive — they record what happened after the fact, or they require a human to go check something on a schedule. Safe Signals builds systems that are continuously active: scanning the radio frequency environment, detecting anomalies, and alerting the people who need to know, immediately.
That thesis applies across environments. The gas pump and the fireground are the first two. They won't be the last.
How we operate
Safe Signals is an independent, bootstrapped company. No venture capital. No outside investors. No acquisition roadmap. This means we build for the long term, we move deliberately, and we don't sacrifice product quality for growth metrics.
We make one firm commitment across all our products: core safety features are never paywalled. The ability to scan for a skimmer, declare a Mayday, or receive an evacuation alert works for every user at every tier. We believe the person who can't afford a premium subscription still deserves to be warned.