Mo Money, Mo Problems...

You've probably heard the term ATM Skimmer, and seen the warnings on the ATM machines about shielding your pin, but do we actually know what an ATM Skimmer is and how it enables criminals to steal your money?

A skimmer sits over the top of the slot you normally put your card in on an ATM. As you insert your card into the machine it takes a copy of the magnetic strip on the back which is the part that holds all the information about your bank, accounts and account numbers, as well as authorising cash withdrawal when paired with the correct pin number.

As you can see in the video below, a cyber security professional (Ben Tedesco) finds a skimmer on an ATM machine and gives us regular folks a chance to see how they work and what they look like.

This kind of device would often be used in conjunction with a pin capture device (pictured below) or, as was later found in this case, a miniature camera monitoring the keypad.

Once the criminals have your magnetic strip information and the corresponding pin number, they program it into "blank" credit cards and go on a spending spree.

These devices are more common than you might think and do affect even our own community - devices similar to those described above were found as recently as November 2015 at Coastlands in Paraparaumu.