Each ATM is allocated a unique secure network address searchable via hotspots; your debit card has a touch-sensitive keypad to pre-key in the required amount and warn via handshake your machine of choice.
When you want to withdraw funds in a certain area, set up the transaction from, for example, your car and then approach the machine to insert card and complete; no more worries about skimming etc.-- Phrontistery, Jun 04 2012 If you insert your card and there's a skimmer then you'll get skimmed. Good skimmers read the magnetic data or chip data on the card.
I know... I got skimmed late last year.-- UnaBubba, Jun 04 2012 The idea is that unless the card is activated to transact with a selected ATM, it is inert so anyone getting the card data won't be able to use it. Each transaction terminates on cash withdrawal and only the true owner of the card can set a transaction in progress.-- Phrontistery, Jun 04 2012 We apparently have different definitions of skimming.
I was referring to an electronic capture device, used to fraudulently obtain card info from the magnetic stripe on the card.
Your idea stipulates you have engaged in a transaction with a specific ATM. Up to that point; fine. It's where you then say you'll insert your card in that ATM to complete the transaction that I have a problem.
That's the point at which my card was skimmed, by a card reader that had a radio device transmitting card data to a guy with a laptop in the nearby McDonald's catching PINs and card numbers and using them in online transactions.-- UnaBubba, Jun 04 2012 I hope you found him.-- Phrontistery, Jun 04 2012 The police did. He caught about 300 people in the small town where I live.
Tricky bastard; he dressed as a bank employee and went to local businesses, offering to service their eftpos readers. Then, having got their permission, "upgraded" them to a new reader, as the "fault" in the old one "wasn't something he could fix outside of the workshop".
Very tidy scam. He'd stolen about $200,000 before he was caught.-- UnaBubba, Jun 04 2012 Is there such a thing as a gullible gene, I wonder?-- Phrontistery, Jun 04 2012 I heard there was, yeah.-- calum, Jun 04 2012 I think it was a preponderance of "dim" genes that caught them out.-- UnaBubba, Jun 04 2012 He's not as dim as the ATM thieves that hit several locations in Maine a couple of years ago. They used a forklift to bash drive-through ATMs from their bases and carry them away. They were caught when the owner of an equipment rental agency saw surveillance-camera footage of their antics on the local news and recognized his machine.
Compared to that, phreaking card numbers and hacking readers is effing brilliant.-- Alterother, Jun 04 2012 random, halfbakery