The South African government has, through its official Twitter account, cautioned the populous to be careful around the ATM to avoid theft and scams.
This specific page has been up for some time, so why remind people of it now? It is, of course, because of the upcoming festive season. ATMs will be busier than usual until the end of the year as people move money around for gifts, travel, expenses or innumerable other reasons as 2020 finally comes to a close.
“Be alert! Criminals have devised various scams to steal money from ATM users, including card skimming, shoulder surfing, card swapping, and trapping cards,” the government writes.
The above message also includes the #SaferFestiveSeason and #TightGrip hashtags, as well as mentioning the official SA Police Service Twitter account.
So what does SABRIC recommend? The organisation warns of card swapping, card skimming, a range of dos and don’ts when at the ATM, and something called the “Lebanese loop” which we had not heard of before now.
“This is a technique used by criminals to trap a bank card inside the ATM by inserting a thin film of plastic into the ATM card slot. The plastic is rigged in such a way that both the plastic and trapped card can later be removed. The victim transacts at the ATM, and the cash and receipt are provided but the card remains trapped. The victim realises that the card has been retained by the ATM. The criminal is in the close vicinity and has already shoulder surfed to get the victims PIN. Once the victim leaves ATM, the criminal goes back to ATM and removes the trapped card and uses it, along with the PIN to withdraw cash immediately,” SABRIC explains.
For more about this as well as terms used in the explanation such as “shoulder surfed”, we recommend giving the SABRIC ATM fraud page a read.
On top of what’s mentioned by the experts something we recommend is avoiding ATMs entirely. While physical cash and the other functionality provided by ATMs will always be required, managing your money online allows you to skip their use and the associated risks. While online banking as its own long list of problems and risks, the physical danger to yourself is absent.
[Image – Peggy_Marco on Pixabay]
