In the last decade, ATM skimmers have risen from fictional threat to very real crime. Now, the European ATM Security Team has announced that the total number of skimming attacks around the world is falling — but the total gains made by crooks continues to rise.
An analysis of ATM attacks in 2014 reveals that the number of skimming attacks reported around the world has fallen from 5822 in 2013 to 5631 in 2014 — a modest decline of 3 per cent. In fact, the total number of ATM-related fraud attacks has dropped massively, from 21,346 last year to 15,702 this year — a fall of 26 per cent and the lowest level since 2010.
It’s thought that the decline in total attacks is due to a massive 95 per cent drop in Transaction Reversal Fraud — where crooks take a couple of notes delivered by an ATM but let it swallow the rest — and a 31 per cent fall in cash trapping attacks. We can thank ATM engineers for those drops.
But it’s not all good news. The total losses due to ATM fraud are up 13 per cent to $US300 million. That’s mainly driven by a surge in losses from ATM skimming, which have risen by 18 per cent and account for $US255 million of those losses. In fact, losses in Europe fell, meaning that it’s the US and Asia-Pacific regions that are on the receiving end of the fraud.
“The rise in international skimming losses is not being seen in European countries where regional card blocking, often known as geo-blocking, has been widely implemented,” explained the European ATM Security Team‘s Executive Director Lachlan Gunnin a press release. “Keeping an active magnetic stripe on a European [Chip and PIN] card continues to make that card vulnerable to card skimming and geo-blocking significantly reduces the risk of successful compromise.”
Of course, we already knew that the US needed to look to Europe to improve its ATM security. Sure, those Chip and PIN cards are on their way — but they need to become pervasive if we’re to beat the crooks at this game.
Pictures: Catatronic/Flickr