Try-It-Out Tuesday: Protect Yourself From Debit Skimmers
When it comes to protecting your identity and finances from thieves, there are certain things that everyone knows to do: shred financial documents before they go into recycling, make online passwords as unique and complex as possible, monitor your online bank account for unfamiliar activity. We know the web (and even our own trash cans) is easily hacked, so we take pains to protect ourselves in these areas. However, when we’re in a space we think is safe — an ATM at a bank, for instance — we can let our guard down and inadvertently leave ourselves open to theft via a debit skimmer.
A debit skimmer is a device that thieves pop on top of an existing ATM keypad and card-reader; the device reads your debit card number and records your PIN, giving thieves access to your whole financial world — or, at least your checking account. Skimmers can be remarkably effective: A bank in Martha’s Vineyard lost close to $100,000 over Labor Day Weekend and suspects that debit skimmers are to blame.
The good news is that skimmers aren’t invisible, and if you know what you’re looking for, you can spot one before you give it your card.
“When you type in your PIN number, sometimes there’s a border around the key pad. If you can put your nail under there and lift it up or if you can see that there’s a physical sticker there, that might be a skimmer,” said Julie Myhre, a content manager at consumer resource NextAdvisor.com. “There are other things to look for too: If the machine has been tampered in general — it is loose, crooked, damaged, scratched, or if you see any sort of tape anywhere on the machine, it’s best not to use it.” Tape residue, too, can be a red flag.
Myhre had some other good tips for avoiding a compromised machine. Here’s what you need to know:
- Be careful in high-volume areas. “I found that the most places where there are skimmers are ATMS in tourist spots,” she said, explaining that in a place where there’s a high volume of foot traffic — think Times Square — a thief could put a skimmer on an ATM and get information from dozens of debit cards in just twenty minutes. “If you put it on a machine in a rural area, the skimmer will have to be on there for days in order to get as much info on it,” Myhre said. That said, don’t let your guard down in an extremely isolated place — like a lone gas station on an empty highway — either. If a thief thinks no one is paying attention to the ATM, he or she could deem it as a good place for a skimmer because they’re less likely to get caught.
- Cover the keypad with your hand. This is good practice anyway (so people walking near you can’t what you type as your PIN), but Myhre said that debit skimmers are sometimes accompanied by a camera posted on top of the machine that thieves use to see exactly what you type.
- Indoor ATMs are safest. Yes, it can be a pain to go inside the bank if the drive-thru is right there (or if you’re in the city and not near a branch location on foot), but Myhre said that the more people who can keep an eye on the ATM, the safer it is for you. “Go inside, [and] go to the ATM across from the teller line,” she said. “They see what’s going on.”
