Australian tourists are being warned to stay alert when using ATMs in Bali. There have been more reports of skimming devices being found on cash machines at the travel hotspot.
Tourists have recently been slapped with a new tax to travel to the Indonesian island. But this week officials confirmed they’d moved to deport a Ukrainian woman found guilty of installing skimming devices on ATMs across popular resorts, according to The Bali Sun.
The woman was initially sentenced to prison in 2022 and fined IDR 100,000,000 – about $10,000 – with authorities confirming she had now been deported to Poland.
Card skimming is when criminals steal or ‘skim’ data from a person’s bank card using devices fitted on ATMs or EFTPOS machines. Once they have this information, they can then use the stolen data to create fake cards.
Credit card skimming devices can look like hardware on existing ATMs or like regular in-store readers, but there can be telltale signs of tampering including features that don’t quite fit with how the rest of the ATM looks or plastic casing that sits over the card reader.
One TikToker, shared a video of her finding a card skimmer while holidaying in Rome, with the device lifting off the machine.
