@iowahighlander: It's not that big of a deal. If someone did go shopping on that card online, your bank would refund the transactions within 5 mins of being on the phone. It's nice to know that you can use it that way if you have to, in an emergency.

RT
www.privacy.pro.tc

So basicly, he'll be arrested for cardskimming because they found his fingerprints on every possible surface on it?

Hate to break it to you, but odds are that your local Barney Fife isn't trained, authorized or interested in properly addressing this sort of thing. Talk with anyone who has been a victim of identity theft and you will soon realize that it's the wild west out there and this new world is no country for old men.

It's only your money, not like they're kids dealing dime bags of pot. Cops have to have their focus their priorities you know....

And, Goldman Sachs has a skimmer attached to AIG.

Wouldn't this be something that the ATM replenishers (aka armored truck companies) could easily nip in the bud when they perform maintenance on them? The ATMs are touched once or twice a day, so they have to notice if something doesn't look right on the machine. If something like these were attached to MY property, I'd want them off before I was held responsible for negligence.

I have decided that the only way to be safe is to try and pry the card reader off the ATM with a screwdriver before each use, to see if it comes off... LOL

;-)

Why does everyone think they need the PIN # for this to work? Almost all check cards will work without a PIN if you just hit the credit key. The thieves dont need your PIN to use these numbers.

Scary. sometimes i hate technology.

It was a nice try, but really a bad mock up. Try harder next time.

Hope this helps you too.

Mike

No, it's not. I've programmed applications to read card data. There would be no point to having a PIN if you coded it on the card.

I know for a fact that it isn't because I changed my ATM pin on my banks website from my mobile phone and used the card, with the new pin, about 30 seconds later.

@Chumas:
I'd say more likely to simply write it off as a cost of doing business, much like drug runners and go-fast boats.

In bulk, the thing probably costs less than $100 to put together with the appropriate know-how, and you can get that back with the first scam purchase.

Interested to know what the capacity of card was...

Regardless, there might be some good incriminating evidence hidden on that memory card. Would be interested if the OP could do a recovery on the card and see what (if anything) there is on it besides card numbers. (i.e. photos from a digital camera, documents...) but actually, thinking on that, it's also possible that the OP could be charged with illegally accessing card information so best to leave it alone.

Well you'd think that would be standard procedure while they are restocking it. At the grocery store where I used to work they would tear down the machine to put the money in the safe every night and then restock it the next morning. It only takes one lazy manager to make it work, or even worse, a manager on the take, to get away with something like that.

@dougp26364: Electronic money. I like to move some of it from my regular checking account to my savings each payday.

Of course, it would be hard to withdraw 0s and 1s.

@rpm773: In fairness to the bank, I think the skimmer might have been installed on, say, a Friday night, and scamming people all throughout the weekend. Perhaps the criminals intended to remove it prior to Monday morning when the bank employees might have inspected the machine?

Things like this make me feel secure so that even if I did get scimmed, I would know right away.

Complain at the bank to the branch manager. At "Bank of the West" one could just not activate the credit card portion of the card (calling the 800 number from home) and the ATM would work fine. Then they changed it so that both were activated at the same time. The account rep that I talked to told me that they couldn't do anything about it. The next time I was in the branch, the Branch Manager came to me and informed me that you can get a plain ATM card, but policy was not to mention it unless they felt the customer might leave over it.

SO... complain again and tell them you are shopping for a new bank. Your mileage may vary.....

Actually, at some banks the manager who opens in the morning is required to inspect the ATM. I was told this by one manager I know.

The PIN isn't stored on the card.

I'm seriously sincerely, curious.

Paying bills through snail mail takes longer, and is worse for the environment. If you pay online, you can save a lot of envelopes and paper. And i don't feel that ATMs (inside a bank) are safer than the teller. The inside of a bank is where the bank robbers come in with guns.

And you might find yourself in an emergency situation where you need money. How do you get that if you don't have an ATM card?

Law enforcement should be able to read the card numbers out of the thing and the bank could check the numbers against bank records, giving them a reasonable idea of how long it has been in place.

Scary stuff.

Go ahead - scoff. (Listen, I only started pumping my own gas two years ago. Some things take time.)

Years ago, I had the rims stolen off my cars - it was left on blocks. When I called the police non-emergency number, they laughed and asked me if I knew who did it.

You can bet if I knew who did it, I wouldn't have been calling the cops - I would have been going after them with a baseball bat.

I watch out for this type of skullduggery each time I swipe my card, but wow...that's pretty convincing. Right down to the braille. Unless the braille has a typo...

Luckily it was only $300, and the bank refunded it to my account within a couple of days. The bank was actually the one who called me and noticed it first...

How do they use the number as a credit purchase online without the 3-digit security number located on the back of the card?

Is that stored on the magnetic strip too?

Am I the only one who now feels MORE paranoid after reading this?!

it was a sheer accident that i got it back at all - apparently usually they don't run the serial numbers of the bikes in the unclaimed property warehouse against the stolen property reports.

too bad they found it wet in a ditch in the rain, put it away wet in a dark unventilated warehouse for a year. so a year after my bike was stolen i got instead of a really nice schwinn, a bunch of rust with some decayed rubbery foam where the handlebars used to be and the 'new' brakes were actually rusted to the tire rims. and the tires.... ugh. ghastly.

if they had checked the serial numbers on the day they found and returned it to me even a few days later it i could have easily dried it off and saved it.

Someone noticed the tinest glob of dried glue on the edge of the skimmer, and that was the only thing that tipped them off. They had also installed a tiny camera off to the side, to record the PIN numbers as people entered them.

There is either a fake keypad on top of the real keypad, or a camera recording people as they enter their PIN number.

"You mean you didn't catch the guy that stole your shit? Ohh you expect us to? Well if you know where he's at, then we'll be happy to go get him, otherwise, we'll let you know if we find anything."

Fingerprints would be useless after the OP pulled it off!

If the cops there are shorthanded like the cops here are (short about 30 officers), then I'm not surprised they didn't bother.

I'm sorry, I just can't get past the part where he was going to withdraw some cash money. Is there any other kind?

Orignially, I thought that the thing to do would have been to leave it and allow the police to catch who ever put it there. Then I realized that they probably would never have the man power, or desire, to stake out an ATM machine, waiting for someone to come pick up their skimmer.

It would be nice if the bank could pull information off the skimmer to lead the police to the person that put it there but, my bet is a report will be filed and the skimmer will be destroyed and placed in the trash.

My bank doesn't charge a fee unless I go to another bank's ATM. Then I pay my bank's fee on top of the other one. Luckily, there are lots of Commerce ATMs here.

@outoftheblew: I think he's saying leave the skimmer in place and stakeout the ATM until the asshole comes to reclaim his prize.

[www.ranchocordovapost.com]

@iowahighlander:

I stand corrected. I now really hate my combined bank card that I was forced to get instead of a plain ATM card.

The police should disable it & put it back, stake out the bank & catch the POS thief that put it there.

ps. I only use my bank's atm & know what each looks like. I'm paranoid about this kind of thing.

@AoE: Not at all... just surprised that people still pay ATM fees. Even more surprised by people that complain about AND still pay ATM fees

Great catch, hero tag is for subby.

/slash
//because I can :)

I'd HOPE that wamu would go through the video on that machine and find out who it was or at least get a grainy image to the cops.

Huh, that must vary place to place as the RBC machines near me all had a "See something new?" poster when the locks went in.

they came down eventually, but maybe the lock there went in before the poster?

@snclfe: A man can hope, can't he =P

I like how my bank's ATM/ABM is setup. Since where the card goes in recessed so a skimmer would look highly out of place on them.
Heres a image of one.

[farm4.static.flickr.com]

@humphrmi: Oh yeah, I've read about the camera thing too. This article mentions thievs attaching cameras:
The Moring Call

Although, it is a crappy newspaper, so maybe their source was that CSI episode.

or do i watch too much tv?

@Brian Taylor: I don't think they'd be able to bust anyone, even if a cop was standing there. Everyone has reason to walk up to an ATM. If someone saw their skimmer wasn't there, they could turn around and say, "Oops, I forgot my wallet." There wouldn't be any suspicious activity to point to any particular person.

So check that ATM for a hidden camera while you are at it.

Pretty low

Damn, this is an unfortunate year to be graduating college. My fiscal sense is all messed up and paranoid. I'm probably going to end up keeping my money between my mattresses.

Trouble was, they neglected to advertise they'd done this. When I approached the machine, the "safety device" looked so out of place, I went into the branch to report it as a skimmer. The poor receptionist said (for likely the 1000th time that morning) "No, it's not a skimmer. It's SUPPOSED to be there."

I used to manage a video store and I could show the cops video of someone stealing movies. They would just go, "Yeah, great" and wander off to fill out their paperwork.

@rpm773:
Live Free!!

Liberty Bank pays back all monthly ATM fees at the end of each period. LOVE IT! (Just keep a $25 balance in a savings account... that's it)

You can test this with an un-networked chip authenticator.

Well at least someone honest found it. I'm sure there's people that could've found that and used it for their own thievery. Good work! Thanks for being one of the good guys!

All the ATMs around here have started attaching these green plastic things ove the card insert slots that have a small picture of a lock on them.

I assume that it's function is that you can't just stick your fake card reader over the bank's platic protector that juts out of the card slot by a good half inch minimum without it being really really obvious.

Guess that's why criminals have moved onto trying to steal and swap pin pads at gas stations here.

Probably a couple dozen-hundreds of numbers on the damn thing. The scammer who dropped it is gonna be mighty pissed.

He needs to look for a video camera that records what your pin number is. Thieves need both info to make fake atm cards.

So much for that security blanket.

Nice job being on top of it. Can't imagine the expression the person who placed it will get when they discover it's gone.