14 DAY TRIAL // The European ATM Security Team (EAST) reports that the number of skimming attacks in Europe has grown by nearly a quarter during the first half of this year, compared to the same period in 2009.
The European ATM Security Team (EAST) is a UK-based non-profit organization, with members from countries within the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA).
Its mission is to gather ATM crime intelligence and to assist the European ATM industry with information and statistics about attacks.
According to its latest European ATM Crime Report report, a number 5,743 ATM skimming attacks were recorded across Europe from January to June 2010.
This represents a 24 percent increase over H1 2009 and the biggest number of attacks ever recorded by the organization for a half-year period.
However, this rise is not consistent over all European countries. In some regions, the rate of ATM skimming has actually decreased.
Also, despite the unprecedented number of attacks, the losses related to skimming have decreased from €155 million during the first half of 2009 to €144 million this year.
The difference is not big, but it's the fifth back-to-back half-year decrease since 2007 and EAST believes that much of it can be attributed to the rollout of chip and PIN systems across Europe.
In fact, this is reflected in a significant drop in domestic losses, from €41 million to €24 million. Meanwhile, international losses have risen by 4%, suggesting that fraudsters are mostly abusing European cards in non-EU countries.
"The industry is concerned to see the number of attacks rising after the substantial investment that has been put into EMV (chip and PIN) technology, a field where Europe is leading the rest of the world," said Lachlan Gunn, EAST director and co-ordinator.
"Unfortunately as long as European EMV cards have a magnetic stripe on them, that stripe is vulnerable to skimming. Chip only debit cards are now starting to appear, which will hopefully help to address this issue,” he added.