Banking/Finance - ATM / POS Source: huffingtonpost
Complete item: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roseanne-colletti/identity-lost-and-found_b_204399.html
Description:
I recently covered a story that started me thinking a little more seriously about
identity theft. Apparently some very daring and technically astute thieves
rigged some ATM machines at two bank locations and swiped half-a-million dollars
from account holders.
Now mind you, they had to go into the enclosed ATM
lobby to do this. Guess those security cameras are only good after the fact. At
any rate, the clever criminals placed a skimming device right above the slot for
the bankcard. That way whenever someone swiped a card, the skimmer recorded and
stored the information on the magnetic strip. The wrongdoers also made a movie
of the keypad as the pin numbers were punched in. They had positioned a tiny
camera in the lighted sign directly overhead. Later they synced up the skimmer
with the camera video and went to town taking from one account after
another.
None of this activity was discovered until one of the bank's
customers reported a discrepancy on his bank statement. And this leads to my
wake-up call. How many of us really check our bank statements that carefully?
Perhaps its because we don't really want to see all those extra fees we may be
paying and could avoid if we only changed banks or accounts. Perhaps its because
we really don't want to know how many times we went to the ATM to get cash we
can't even remember spending.
However, denial and fear of unpleasant
knowledge aside, checking your bank statement each and every month, online or in
the mail, is one way to combat identity theft. And it's important to keep you
from losing money and maybe fighting with your bank to get it back.
