Cash machine card skimming: the simple way you can avoid it
It’s not even a technological solution. But with the number of cash machines having skimmers and cameras fitted to them by crims, here’s a simple method - on a par with entering the wrong password first time you go to a site from a link in an email, to check whether it’s bona fide - to not get skimmed:
Don’t use cash machines.
So how do I get cash, you wonder?
Simple. Cashback, at the supermarket. It’s free (generally), secure and you can be about as sure as you can that your PIN isn’t being copied.
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- Cash machine fraudsters use convincing "add-on" on ATMs (30 October 2004; score: 78.25%)
- The guaranteed way to avoid being phished; and the mobile business's best news in a decade (14 April 2005; score: 67.16%)
- In The Guardian: why Google bought into AOL; and review of the year (22 December 2005; score: 41.86%)
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February 24th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Cash is sooo 20th century.
February 24th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
…except that using stolen or cloned cards to clean out an account with cashback is an even more popular form of card fraud - and by using it regularly you’ll set up a pattern of usage that won’t trigger fraud detection systems as quickly if your card is stolen or cloned…
February 24th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
Simon, what’s your evidence for saying that about cashback? Got a pointer to research or an article confirming this?
I’d have thought that a supermarket or any similar place that would do cashback would have PIN protection. The idea is that you don’t use cash machines at all, hence no risk of losing your PIN (you hope..). If someone does do that, then the supermarket has to bear the cost because it’ll not be your signature. So one would expect that since chip&PIN, which is a year old now, supermarkets would only do cashback on PIN.
February 25th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Chrales, your advice is only good for Europe where chip and pin is deployed.
The criminals are compromising the readers in supermarkets as well. They break in over night and install a new circuit board in the card readers. These are fairly easy to dismantle, much easier than an ATM.
Recently there was a major issue with TJMAX over here in the states.
The banks are going to have to be forced to upgrade the ATM machines to use the chip and pin scheme. The state of the art in the UK has been much less good than for the US where the banks claims of infallible security have been dismissed as bunk forcing them to deploy cameras in the machines.
February 25th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Interesting to read this three days after my own card was skimmed. It happened at the local petrol station: a few hours later, someone was spending my money in Kuala Lumpur. I was impressed by how quickly the bank spotted it and got in touch with me; since then, I’ve discovered that several other people locally have had the same experience.
April 17th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
When I received my bank statement for March there were three transactions,
all from the same branch of Waitrose over a 4 day period.
No problem there,except that on each there was also a cashback that
I hadn’t requested or received, 2 for £10 and 1 for £30. My bank’s Fraud Dept is investigating.
Apparently the shop copies of till receipts may carry the full card details - there has been a similar problem at Morrisons. So much for cashback being safer than ATMs!!!!
May 6th, 2007 at 11:51 pm
Alot of the newer atm machines are swipes (in the US at least). Using those minimize the chances of fraud than the machines that take your machine to do the transaction
January 15th, 2008 at 1:12 am
I was shocked to find about £700 taken out of cash machines in India on consecutive days using my BarclayCard and PIN !!
I have never been to India and my card has always been in my possession !!
Barclaycard insist that MY CARD and PIN were used and not cloned and hence I am liable.
I pointed out that I have been going to work every day and thats evidence enough of me being in UK at the time of withdrawals in India.
The bank has the cheek to say that I might passed my card and pin on to some one in India??
I am taking it up, but cant the banks tell if a cloned card has been used?
I was told if the bank looked into the transactions they would be able to tell if the original card was used or a cloned …..Is this true??
May 21st, 2009 at 7:37 pm
JamesJohn, Your bank will have a more difficult time with a pin based transaction, but they
should still take care of those charges, especially if you were using the card in a different
location then where the withdrawals took place at the same time.
In regards to supermarkets, you are no safer there. Employees of restaurants, supermarkets and
any type of store will place the skimmer on the machine themselves and they get a certain amount
of money for every card they swipe. Your best bet is to always keep your card in sight (do
not let someone at a restaurant or store take the card somewhere you cannot see it) and make
sure you check any atm’s you use. Normally you can put your finger in the slot where the card
is read and see if it jiggles, if it does, most likely it is a skimmer. You can also just grab
the card reader and jiggle it, if it is a bad job, the whole thing might come off. Best bet is
to go to the same atm you usually go to as then you can normally tell if something is different.
June 19th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
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