Over on Northwest Wallingford’s Nextdoor site, Daniel says he found an ATM skimmer at the 7-Eleven on Stone Way and 40th:
I discovered a skimmer on the ATM machine at 7-Eleven on Stone Way and 40th. I removed the device and gave it to the clerk and asked him to call the police.
That’s not the first time that someone said they found a skimmer installed in a local 7-Eleven. Back in January, Jeffrey posted to Southeast Wallingford Nextdoor site:
At 3:23 PM, I removed a card skimmer from the Cardtronics ATM at the 7-Eleven at 304 N 36th St. A card skimmer is a device that criminals place on ATM machines to read the card numbers off of your card. The skimmer looks like it’s part of the ATM, unless you know what to look for. In this case:
1. The card reader was not mounted flush with the ATM housing.
2. It was easy to wiggle. A card reader should be firmly mounted on the housing.See the pictures below: it’s really quite realistic. Some variants I’ve seen have a grey ring around the outside too.
I gave it to the store owner and took some pictures of it. Then, I called Cardtronics around 5:30 PM to report the problem. They will disable the machine, file a police report and send a technician out ASAP.
As Daniel went on to say, if you’ve used either of those machines, a call to your bank should be in order. According to the well-respected Krebs on Security blog, skimming is on the rise nationally:
In a series of recent alerts, the FICO Card Alert Service warned of large and sudden spikes in ATM skimming attacks. On April 8, FICO noted that its fraud-tracking service recorded a 546 percent increase in ATM skimming attacks from 2014 to 2015.
“The number of ATM compromises in 2015 was the highest ever recorded by the FICO Card Alert Service, which monitors hundreds of thousands of ATMs in the US,” the company said. “Criminal activity was highest at non-bank ATMs, such as those in convenience stores, where 10 times as many machines were compromised as in 2014.”
While Jeffrey and Daniel were able to spot the device, it can be easy to overlook, so the best protection is to remember that the skimming device records your bank card information, but not your PIN:
As I’ve noted in countless skimmer stories here, the simplest way to protect yourself from ATM skimming is to cover your hand when entering your PIN. That’s because most skimmers rely on hidden cameras to steal the victim’s PIN.
Interestingly, a stat in Verizon‘s new Data Breach Investigations Report released this week bears this out: According to Verizon, in over 90 percent of the breaches in the report last year involving skimmers used a tiny hidden camera to steal the PIN.
The Verizon report also offers this advice about ATM safety: Trust your gut. “If you think that something looks odd or out of place, don’t use it. While it is increasingly difficult to find signs of tampering, it is not impossible. If you think a device may have been tampered with, move on to another location, after reporting to the merchant or bank staff.”