Clever scam artists, the only criminals we refer to as artists, have recently come up with a new way to steal money from your bank account through ATMs.  The scam starts when you go to insert your card into the slot at an ATM, but are unable to do so which is obviously puzzling.  Fortunately for you, there is a helpful stranger also at the ATM who tells you that he had the same problem, but was able to access the ATM by using the tap function that allows your card to use a radio wave to access your account without having to insert your card into the card reader.  Unfortunately, you later find out that not only did you access your account, but so did the helpful stranger who had earlier plugged the ATM card slot with glue to make it unusable and then used your account to withdraw money because whenever you use the tap feature, the account remains open for more transactions unless you log out.  Many people don’t think of this and merely take their card and their money and leave.

TIPS

The key to avoiding this scam is to make sure whenever you use an ATM that you affirmatively log out of the account before you leave whether you use the tap feature or not.

If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is to go to the bottom of the initial page of http://www.scamicide.com and type in your email address on the tab that states “Sign up for this blog.”