On a summer evening at my local pub, I ran out of cash and headed over the road with a friend to use the ATM. All regular stuff.
The machine ate my card. Initially cursing my luck and thinking there was just an issue with my card, I explained the problem to my friend and pawed lamely at the card slot on the machine.
But fiddling with the machine made me notice something. The facing around the card slot had moved a little. I picked at it and managed to drag out the attached magnetic tape that was holding my card. A card catcher.
This is a very simple device that retains your card so that someone else can retrieve it. There are quite a few variations of the theme but they all feature a tape of sorts that slips into the machine and catches the card, plus a front piece that sits in front of the usual ATM card slot.
→ Card catchers and skimmers have a related purpose but work differently. A skimmer reads your card on its way into the regular card slot and stores the data for later. A card catcher pretends to retain your card so you assume the bank has confiscated it. Skimmers let crooks make a digital counterfeit of your card later. Card catchers let crooks get hold of your actual card (including the chip, if it has one, and the security code printed on the back).
Full Artical
The machine ate my card. Initially cursing my luck and thinking there was just an issue with my card, I explained the problem to my friend and pawed lamely at the card slot on the machine.
But fiddling with the machine made me notice something. The facing around the card slot had moved a little. I picked at it and managed to drag out the attached magnetic tape that was holding my card. A card catcher.
This is a very simple device that retains your card so that someone else can retrieve it. There are quite a few variations of the theme but they all feature a tape of sorts that slips into the machine and catches the card, plus a front piece that sits in front of the usual ATM card slot.
→ Card catchers and skimmers have a related purpose but work differently. A skimmer reads your card on its way into the regular card slot and stores the data for later. A card catcher pretends to retain your card so you assume the bank has confiscated it. Skimmers let crooks make a digital counterfeit of your card later. Card catchers let crooks get hold of your actual card (including the chip, if it has one, and the security code printed on the back).
Full Artical
