ATM Card Phishing
A report issued August 2, 2005, by Gartner, Inc. describes how thieves have stolen more than $2.75 billion by using phishing scams to obtain debit card account numbers and PINs from unsuspecting consumers. The thieves use the account numbers to create fake cards, then use the cards and PINs to drain consumers' accounts, leaving consumers to deal with the bounced checks and the banks to reimburse the victims, as described in more detail here. The debit cards of some banks, such as Bank of America, are not targets because the banks take advantage of a second track on the magnetic strips on their cards to embed additional security codes that consumers -- and therefore data phishing thieves -- don't know about. Banks whose debit cards have been hard hit by these attacks have begun using the second track on the magnetic strips on their cards and have beefed up their security codes in order to prevent the attacks.
Posted by Randy Gainer