Thieves often use small cameras to capture footage of debit card users entering their personal identification number, or PIN, so they can have free access to their money. "In a gas station, where you do have a whole bunch of pay-at-the-pump kinds of things and minimal supervision, it's pretty easy for a bad guy to put a skimming device on and put a little pinpoint camera there and compromise debit cards that way," Conroy says. Gas station payment terminals have many of the characteristics card fraudsters love, Conroy says. Read more from Bankrate: Keep savings, checking accounts at 1 bank Before you even get home, I've debited your account." I put a skimmer in there, and I'm picking up all the information. "I'm sitting across the street with a laptop and an antenna. "You go to a gas station and you stick your debit card in there and you swipe it through a machine," Abagnale says. Quicklist:title: Stealing PINs at gas stationstext: Gas stations are another danger zone for debit card use.
You can spot ATM skimmers by checking for ATM components that look beaten up or askew, she says. Julie Conroy, research director at Aite Group LLC, a Boston-based financial services research firm, says even the card terminals that card users must swipe to get into ATM vestibules are being used as a skimming site by criminals. He says you're better off using an ATM inside a retail outlet or other high-trafficked, well-lit place. "If the public has access to it, then someone has the ability to add skimming devices to it, position cameras on it and position themselves in a way where they could surveil it." "Any transaction you do outdoors at an open ATM is going to be higher risk exposure," McGoey says. Read more from Bankrate: Married with separate checking accounts Those machines are often placed over the real card slots at ATMs and other card terminals. Skimming is the practice of capturing a bank customer's card information by running it through a machine that reads the card's magnetic strip. But some ATMs present a perfect opportunity for thieves to skim users' debit cards, says Chris McGoey, a security consultant based in Los Angeles.
The idea that outdoor ATMs are among the most dangerous places to use a debit card seems a little bit absurd. While debit card fraud is always a possibility, being careful where you use it can help keep your checking account balance out of the hands of criminals. Although credit card users got their accounts straightened out and new cards were in the mail within a few days, the case created major problems for debit card holders, who waited an average of two to three months to get reimbursed, Abagnale says. The incident resulted in $150 million in fraud losses, and much of it was pulled directly from customers' bank accounts. Maxx data breach that exposed the payment information of thousands of customers in 2007. He cites the example of the TJX Companies Inc.'s T.J. Because of that, even clear-cut cases of fraud where victims are protected from liability by consumer protection laws can cause significant hardship, says Frank Abagnale, a secure-document consultant in Washington, D.C.
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