Damage at a record low: data theft at ATMs is becoming less common

Saturday, January 16, 2021

Damage at record low
Data theft at ATMs is becoming less common

Experts consider data theft at ATMs in Germany to be an obsolete model. Both the number of "skimming" attacks and the damage will fall to a record low in 2020. But criminals find other ways to gain access to someone else's accounts.

The damage caused by data theft at ATMs in Germany fell to a record low in 2020 as a whole. The Frankfurt facility Euro Kartensysteme puts the gross amount of damage caused by so-called "skimming", i.e. spying on card data and PIN, at around EUR 1.06 million. In 2019, the "skimming" damage in Germany amounted to just over 1.4 million euros. In 2013 it was 11.3 million euros, in 2012 and 2011 even 34 million euros each.

The financial sector attributes the decline primarily to investments in so-called EMV technology: Payment cards are equipped with a kind of mini-computer, the card is checked for authenticity every time it is used. Germany has been using this technology for years.

From January to December 2020 inclusive, criminals manipulated ATMs nationwide 152 times in order to get data from bank customers, according to Euro Kartensysteme. In the previous year there had been 245 such "skimming" cases. Individual machines could have been attacked several times. Last year, data thieves struck especially in North Rhine-Westphalia (44 cases), Hesse (33) and Lower Saxony (20).

Theft with a card and pin

Consumers in Germany who have become victims of "skimming" do not normally have to fear any financial disadvantage. As a rule, financial institutions compensate for such damage – provided that customers have handled their bank card and PIN carefully. Thanks to international agreements, the local banking industry can now recover almost the entire loss amount. The countries with the lowest security standards have to pay for damages from fraudulent transactions with stolen card data.

Basically, counterfeit cards can only be used where payment cards are still equipped with magnetic strips that can be copied relatively easily and reading devices in retail are designed for magnetic strips. In 2020, duplicate cards based on data stolen in this country were used primarily in India (around 35 percent of the damage), the USA (26.6 percent) and Indonesia (15.4 percent).

Much greater damage has occurred in Germany for years as a result of theft and loss of payment cards. Euro card systems registered an increase to 10,839 (previous year: 10,790) cases last year. The gross damage from loss and theft of cards rose from around EUR 14.6 million to almost EUR 15.7 million. Many consumers make it easy for criminals because despite all warnings they keep their card and PIN together in their wallets.