ATM skimming

learn how atm skimming works and protect yourself ..........

ATM skimming is like identity theft for debit cards: Thieves use hidden electronics to steal the personal information stored on your card and record your PIN number to access all that hard-earned cash in your account. That's why skimming takes two separate components to work. The first part is the skimmer itself, a card reader placed over the ATM's real card slot [source: Krebs]. When you slide your card into the ATM, you're unwittingly sliding it through the counterfeit reader, which scans and stores all the information on the magnetic strip.

Cases of ATM skimming

A customer at a New York City bank discovered a skimming device on the face of an ATM and went inside the bank to inform the branch manager. The manager, who had never seen an ATM skimmer and wasn’t sure what to do, took the skimmer and thanked him. The customer then remembered, from numerous reports about ATM skimming, that there is usually a second part to the ATM skimmer, the camera. In this case, he found it behind a small mirror that alerts the ATM user to beware of “shoulder surfers.” He brought the camera to the bank manager, who replied by saying, “Maybe we should shut that machine down, huh?” The bank manager contacted bank security, shut down the machine, and alerted other area banks.