Thursday, December 03, 2009

A risk in using an ATM machine

In a Risks Digest, Ben Moore reports about Used ATM Machines for Sale on Craigslist:

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Used ATM machines are for sale on auction sites, many of which still contain credit card numbers.
Identity theft expert Robert Siciliano is claiming that he bought a used ATM machine on Craigslist for $750. Apparently, this isn't unusual: he found plenty of machines on both Craigslist and eBay ranging between $500 and $2000 USD. However, this particular ATM machine was listed by a bar north of Boston, and contained 1000 credit card numbers.
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Wow! I didn't realize that ATM machines kept credit card information. I figured that the data was just transmitted to a central computer.

I'm not sure what the solution is. I think I would be very careful about using a bank which released an ATM machine with credit card information. I wonder if there is a site which track where the bad ATM machines came from.


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Technorati tags: ATM, credit, cards

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