New tactics employed to steal PINs Published July 13, 2011 By Richard Brock 81st Training Wing Legal Office KEESLER AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. -- The conflict between efforts to protect personal information and development of new techniques to steal it continues to escalate. In a recently reported case, criminals used a different approach to "skimming" to record details from the magnetic strips of payment cards and capture individual personal identification numbers. In the past, criminals have employed skimming devices on automatic teller machines outside of banks and other commercial businesses and have operated at night, wearing hoods to make identification by security cameras difficult. In this latest incident, the crooks entered bank buildings and modified lobby ATMs by replacing the PIN pads with ones which recorded customer PINs and card account information and transmitted them to a remote location. Using the stolen information, the criminals encoded the individuals' account information onto credit and gift cards -- employing the cloned cards to steal more than $1.5 million from customer accounts. Be sure to carefully inspect any ATM machine before swiping your credit card. Skimmers generally look slightly out of place with the rest of the ATM. If you have any doubts regarding the security of a machine, use a different machine or make your transaction directly with a clerk or teller. For more information, call 376-8601.