ATMs are an indispensable tool for managing our day-to-day financial situation. They allow us to withdraw money, check our balance and perform other banking operations very easily and quickly. However, ATMs have an error that often goes unnoticed and could put your security at risk.
We are talking about the receipts issued at the end of each transaction. These papers contain sensitive data that could be exploited by criminals to do harm. Among the information that appears on them are:
- The last digits of your account.
- Your full name, depending on your bank’s setup.
- Specific details of the transaction.
All this data, although it may seem harmless, can be very useful for fraudsters to design fraud strategies, such as phishing. This is warned by cybersecurity experts, such as those at Kaspersky Lab, who published an interesting report on the operation of ATMs on their website.
Phishing: a scam mode that is on the rise
Nowadays, phishing is one of the tactics most commonly used by fraudsters to deceive victims. This consists of making calls or sending messages with the aim of obtaining personal or financial information. A fairly common example is for a criminal to retrieve a discarded receipt and contact the holder posing as a bank representative. With convincing arguments and some data from that receipt, he could request more data or even perform unauthorized transactions.
In addition, the data from these receipts can help build complete profiles of the victims. This facilitates other crimes such as identity theft. For this reason, cybersecurity experts are calling for fixing this error in ATMs, in order to decrease the amount of such crimes that are currently being carried out.
Recommendations to reduce potential risks
Although receipts can represent a latent risk, there are actions that could protect you from possible fraud. Here are some recommendations to avoid problems with this small document:
- Keep receipts in a safe place: organize them by date and type of transaction. This will make it easier to consult them later.
- Destroy the vouchers properly: if you do not need them, dispose of them with a paper shredder or tear them into small pieces before discarding them. The idea is to make the information unreadable to prevent criminals from consulting it.
- Verify the data with your digital records: make sure that the transactions on the vouchers match those registered in your online banking.
What are the receipts for?
As we have already said, although they are small and seemingly harmless, this ATM error transforms vouchers into a gateway for financial fraud if they are not handled carefully. Adopting the actions recommended a moment ago will help to avoid becoming a victim of fraud.
But if this poses risks to our financial situation, why keep them? The truth is that vouchers also offer important benefits, for example:
- Proof of transactions: they are tangible documents that can serve in case of discrepancies with the bank. For example, if the balance in your account does not match the amount withdrawn, a receipt can be crucial when filing a claim.
- Financial control: they allow you to keep a detailed record of the operations carried out in your account, identify spending patterns and detect suspicious movements.
Now, knowing the importance of receipts and the risk they represent, what can you do about it? Cybersecurity experts argue that this error could be fixed just by providing less information in such documents issued by ATMs. Only the essential data for the transaction would be enough to serve as proof and in turn, prevent further fraud.
