ATM PIN card fraud exposed
Austrian police have raised the alarm after an expert report was produced claiming bank card fraudsters have managed to work out how to get PIN codes from stolen bank cards.
Bank officials have always denied that the PIN codes are stored on the cards but after a spate of thefts from accounts using stolen cards where police have ruled out any other possibility - they have now asked the banks to investigate the thefts.
In the past people who have lost money from their accounts from crooks who have apparently had access to the secret PIN code have either been suspected of storing the PIN with the card, or of having visited a machine that was tampered with to allow PIN codes to be extracted. Some stores also save PIN numbers that can either accidentally or actively be passed on to crooks.
But after several cases where this has been ruled out, police have now come to the conclusion that the data must be somehow on the stolen cards - and that crooks have worked out how to extract it.
An Austrian prosecution spokesman confirmed: "We believe it must be an international group that is behind it, there have been too many cases now over too wide an area for any other theory to be practical."
The police expert report suggesting that the PIN is on the card is now being used by victims to get the bank's to refund the cash taken.
Victim Sigrid Polzer said: "The bank told me they had never had a case like it - and they are looking into it."
A Bank Austria spokesperson said that they were looking into the allegations and if there were security issues - they would be acted on immediately.
http://austriantimes.at/news/Business/2013-01-06/46355/ATM_PIN_card_fraud_exposed