I’ll admit, I’m not the insomniac whose brain refuses to shut down because of something like a skimmer. They do scare me. Less from a personal liability perspective and more from a corporate liability perspective.
Have you ever seen a real-life example of an ATM that has been doctored with a skimmer? Today is your lucky day! One Gizmodo reader submitted his pictures and story.
Maybe I’m crazy, and maybe it’s just not that big of a deal anymore. The bad guys are getting very crafty now, and able to fit skimmers to specific ATM models. It used to be that if you used an ATM regularly, it would be very easy to tell if someone had tampered with it. Stray wires, duct tape (NOT DUCK TAPE), odd cameras or mirrors, all of which should be red flags to any user of that magical machine that makes you feel like you win every time you play with it!
Remember those old “fake ATMs” that were essentially just big skimming devices? I think many of us became wary of the generic ATM machine in a parking lot after that. But we’re not talking about that here. We’re talking about the ATM near your house that you visit every week, and you may not even be able to detect it!
At a minimum I would suggest that you disable the ability to withdraw funds from anything but a checking account from an ATM. Hopefully that should at least minimize the amount of money you would be out if you fell victim to such an attack. Any more suggestions than what is above might stray into the personal finance realm, and I’ll let those guys blog about that!
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