It's called a "skimmer", and crooks put it on top of legitimate ATMs to capture your card number and PIN. From the outside, it looks like this:
If you look really closely, you'll see a pinhole on the right that has a camera recording you as you enter your PIN.
Brian Krebs has a very interesting post about how this sort of thing happens, and what you can do to protect yourself.
5 comments:
Interesting post. I'll show it to the nice teller at my bank the next time she tries to talk me into getting an ATM card.
I hate to admit this, but other than my military service, I've always been self-employed in a cash business of one kind or another. I've never used an ATM in my life. Never will, now.
i always give the ATM's card reader a good yank before i use it. same thing for gas pumps - give it a yank. if it comes apart, then hey, you've found a skimmer.
Laura has it right! :-)
Haven't used the atm card in a while, mostly because of how easy it is to empty a bank account due to convenience.
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