SIGN UP FOR OUR By Wendy Anders
An ATM skimming device being installed in the card slot, photo from Facebook for illustrative purposes.
Over the past four months, bank officials in Costa Rica have discovered at least 20 skimming devices used to steal data from ATM users’ cards.
Rodney Jiménez, spokesman for the Costa Rican Banking Association (ABC, in Spanish), said the figure is worrying, as it shows that criminal organizations continue to target bank customers, according to a report in the Costa Rican Spanish daily newspaper La Nación.
The scammers place skimming devices in teller machines, and the information they steal is sent to other countries to commit various types of fraudulent transactions outside of Costa Rica, one anonymous bank investigator told the newspaper.
Last weekend two skimmers were detected in Bank of Costa Rica (BCR) ATMs – one at a bank and one in a supermarket, both in San José.
Head of investigations at the BCR, Monserrat Alfaro, said the bank quickly detected the placement of the devices, and was able to intervene quickly to avoid any customers experiencing thefts or problems.
In San José alone this year, from September to the first week of December, 215 complaints regarding copying the magnetic strip on credit and debit cards (skimming) were received by the Police Judicial Investigation Agency.
Reports of economic losses start to surface several days after the devices are placed in ATMs, said the ABC, which gives thieves a lot of lead time to carry out fraudulent purchases.
To try to prevent skimming from happening, and help officials discover and remove such devices, ATM users are advised to check that the area surrounding the slot where the card is inserted is not loose, and look to see if any unusual looking component or device is on top of the ATM, as this might be a disguised camera. The skimming devices are often very small and hard to detect, but it doesn’t hurt to double check before using an ATM.
Another way to protect your data is to cover the keypad with your hand when punching in your pin so that if there is a hidden camera, it won’t record this information. Also, if an ATM gives an error message or says it is offline, do not keep trying to carry out your transaction, rather go directly to the bank or contact the bank’s emergency number to report anything strange, said bank officials to La Nación.
If you see any unusual behavior near or inside an ATM it is best to report it immediately.
