As we have known for some time now, ATMs and ATMs (unfortunately) lend themselves a lot to scams by malicious people, who manage to clone our credit cards that we insert inside them through the use of a special skimmer, which allows hidden reading.
The withdrawal is an action that we perform daily throughout the day, but we must always be careful of any dangers and risks of scams that it hides.
According to some recent studies and statistics, there are certain days of the week when withdrawing can become riskier than other quieter days. In particular, one of the most dangerous and prone to scam days is the Fridaysince a customer, in the event that he is scammed with the cloning of the card, he cannot contact the assistance at his bank until Monday morning of the following week.
To this, moreover, there is a risk given by the fact that many current account holders are used to withdrawing on Fridaysin view of the cash expenses they will make over the upcoming weekend. For this reason, our advice is to make a statement of your credit card oftengoing to report immediately to your bank in case of strange or suspicious movements, so as to block it immediately.
In addition to this we suggest you always cover with your hand when we enter the PIN in front of the ATMso as not to be caught by any stealth cameras that the potential scammer has installed on that particular ATM.
How cloning works
As we said before, in fact, the cloning of the credit card is carried out through a system called “skimmer”, that is a fake slot that is mounted above the counter: the bank customer will then pass the credit card first inside the skimmerthus allowing the scammer to read all the details of his credit card. The scammer at this point, with all the data in hand, will be able to make purchases without problems, both at physical stores and online.
It is absolutely necessary, in the case of scams of this type, to immediately alert the police, reporting the incident. In addition to this, we will obviously have to call our bank or contact the physical counter to promptly block the credit card, to prevent any unwanted transactions.
We also remind you that you can also block your credit card from the comfort of your smartphone, thanks to the home banking app that the vast majority of banks now have.
