Be careful while drawing money from ATMs which require cards to be swiped, not inserted. Some such ATMs have a loophole where someone who knows your personal identification number (PIN) can punch it within 30 seconds of your transaction and access your account. The police have arrested a man who used to do just that, reports the Mumbai newspaper DNA.
A few days ago, a photographer from Girgaum, Pankaj Pramod Vaidya, went to an ATM of a government bank on SVP road around 1.15am. He found the security guard missing, but another person following him inside. Vaidya asked him to wait outside till his transaction was over. But the man told him he was an ATM supervisor and was checking if the machines were functioning properly.
As Vaidya stepped out of the ATM after withdrawing money, he sensed something fishy about the man. He pretended to leave, but kept watch over the man.
Vaidya saw him enter his (Vaidya's) PIN and withdraw Rs2,000. He barged into the ATM booth, caught hold of the man and raised an alarm, hearing which a police patrol van reached the spot.
The man has been identified as Bhupen Shivbahadur Mishra, 26, a resident of Daulat Bhuvan building in Vasant Wadi, Kalbadevi, said senior inspector Vilas Patil of the VP road police station.
Under police questioning, Mishra said he used to be an ATM security guard and had discovered that if the PIN of a card is punched into machines (which require cards to be swiped) within 30 seconds of the end of a transaction, the account could be accessed.
"We simply could not believe his trick and asked for a demonstration. He showed us it was possible," Patil said. "We checked if the trick could be pulled off at other ATM booths, but found it could not be. We think the trick works with ATMs which need cards to be just swiped."
Loney Antony, managing director, Prism Payments, an ATM managing company, said: "In some ATM screens, the question 'Do you wish to continue?' appears. For a new transaction, one just needs to punch the PIN again.
"Most banks realised this was a problem area and changed the screen flow. So a new transaction cannot be done unless one swipes the card again. We advise banks to make their ATMs ask for the card and the PIN for every transaction."
