It's up to you to take good care of your card and PIN number to protect yourself from fraud at automatic teller machines, Charl Cilliers, the Banking Ombudsman, says: there's only so much banks can do to protect you.
"ATM fraud is sophisticated and pervasive," he says. "This type of crime makes up 13 percent of the complaints that we have received."
Though only a small percentage of the 230 million ATM transactions which take place each year are involved, in some cases people have lost their life savings.
The banks should take steps to make ATM's safer, Cilliers says but at the same time you should protect yourself.
"However clever the scam or the thief, money can only be withdrawn by a criminal if he somehow obtains both the cardholder's PIN and card," he says and in most cases the criminal can only get them from you, the cardholder.
"Complainants sometimes accuse bank staff of complicity in ATM fraud, believing that bank staff are able to obtain a customer's PIN. We have been assured that it is almost impossible for bank staff to do this. As far as we are aware, bank staff have seldom been found to be involved in ATM fraud."
Customers, he says, could do much more to prevent loss to themselves if they followed basic guidelines for the protection of cards and PINS provided by the banks:
* Do not reveal your PIN to anyone;
* Do not keep your PIN and card together;
* Make sure no-one is watching you when you key in your PIN;
* Key in your PIN only when you are prompted to do so by the screen; and
* Don't let anyone distract you or help you when you are using the ATM.
By doing this you can protect yourself against all types of ATM fraud except one where the criminal gets a card on your account by means of a false identity document, Cilliers says.
"The thief reports the card missing at the bank and requests a new card. If the bank is taken in by the false ID, and does not make further checks, the criminal may be issued with a new card and PIN, belonging to another's account.
"This is the only situation in which the customer cannot protect himself by safeguarding his card and PIN," Cilliers says, noting that in these cases the bank will usually reimburse the victim for any loss.
And remember that if your card is swallowed by the ATM, this does not necessarily mean that the card is in the bank and that you can go and get it back if the machine has been rigged, the card is not in the bank's possession and can be extracted from the ATM by the criminal. You should cancel your card at once.
Banks have taken steps to protect customers who use ATMs: from making the rigging of machines more difficult; to redesigning booths so no one can see you key in your PIN; closing some ATMs after hours; creating emergency 24-hour telephone services so that you can cancel your card if it is stolen; and by putting telephones, video cameras and guards in ATMs, as well as notices to warn you of the danger. Banks also send out newsletters describing the latest scams.
But there is more they can do, Cilliers says, for instance, to reduce delays in getting through to the toll-free emergency number which you can use to cancel cards.
"It was admitted by one bank that at a certain time on a certain day, a customer would have had to wait almost half an hour after phoning the toll-free number before being able to speak to someone who could cancel the card. Banks need to employ sufficient staff to answer these calls so that customers do not wait more than a few minutes. Banks know that thieves who obtain cards use them almost immediately after stealing them."