“The most widespread crime type we face” is ATM skimming

According to The ATM Industry Association skimming is one of the industry's most recurrent fraud threats. The practice of fraud in Frederick, Maryland first was revealed in April, when the PNC Bank ATM was equipped with skimming device as police of Frederick said.

That device recorded customers’ cards numbers. A video recording device was placed near the ATM. As police thinks such placement was done in order to capture personal identification numbers entered into the machine.

Fred Solomon, PNC Bank spokesman said that he cannot speak about security or theft matters in accordance with bank policies. This prohibition also applies to information about how many customers were affected by skimming at the Thomas Johnson Drive branch. Further he added that customers with unidentifiable transactions on their statements should contact their local branches.

ATM Industry Association CEO Mike Lee described this problem as “probably the most widespread crime type we face."

Skimming is one of the financial industry's fastest-growing crimes, according to the U.S. Secret Service, which investigates bank fraud. The ATM Industry Association has reported more than $1 billion annually in global losses from credit card fraud and electronic crime associated with ATMs.

Last week, an international Anti Skimming Forum was launched by the ATM Industry Association. The goal of the forum is to counteract the growing trend of skimming. As Lee said, skimming is a problem that will continue to increase until technology brings it under control.

The mission of the ATM industry's new forum is to measure the global impact of skimming through the pooling and analysis of data. Also the forum was created to write best practices for preventing and reducing skimming, including a global skimming classification system. 

Lee thinks that simple measures such as educating customers to protect their PINs by covering the hand used to key in the PIN at an ATM so someone cannot learn the code. As he believes by that way the success rate of skimming attacks will be reduced.