PORT OF SPAIN – Thousands of commercial bank customers across the country may have had their account information compromised as a result of the skimming activity that took place at the RBC automated teller machines (ATM) last week.
It does not matter if you are not a RBC customer.
Once you used an affected ATM you are at risk.
Among those who may have been affected are hundreds of Republic Bank Limited customers, the bank’s managing director David Dulal-Whiteway said Sunday.
Republic Bank has begun contacting the suspected affected customers but so far there have not been any reports of missing funds, Dulal-Whiteway said.
However “it is early days still”, Dulal-Whiteway added.
The Express spoke to one of the affected customers.
“I got a call from Republic Bank today[Sunday] and they told me that my name was on the list of a number of account holders at Republic Bank whose debit cards were possibly compromised and I found that strange,” the affected customer said.
The Express contacted Dulal-Whiteway for clarification on the situation.
“Any bank would be affected if their customer was the user of an affected RBC machine. So if a Republic Bank customer who has a Republic Bank debit card went to a RBC machine then you run the risk of that customer’s card being skimmed,” Dulal-Whiteway said.
Dulal-Whiteway said as a result of the skimming, Republic Bank has taken action to protect its customers.
Dulal-Whiteway yesterday described the process of “skimming”.
“A fraudster puts a device on an ATM machine and on the machine they also normally position a camera somewhere so when you put your ATM card into the machine it skims the information. With a debit card you also need a PIN (personal identification number) so through the camera they would have placed they would pick up the PIN. So the fraud is specific to the machine itself and anybody, any card from any part of the world that used one of those machines they run the risk of their card being compromised.
“So we would we have gotten information from the LINX system, a listing of all the Republic customers who would have used a RBC machine and in order to protect them we have contacted our customers,” Dulal-Whiteway.
The bank has begun replacing the cards.
Dulal-Whiteway said any bank customer who used the affected machines runs the risk of having their information compromised.
“They run the risk of somebody making a new version of their card and going somewhere else and withdrawing money from their account. Dulal-Whiteway said customers should peruse their bank statements when they get them and match back withdrawals. (Express)