Skimming Device Found at Upper West Side Duane Reade

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — One heroic Upper West Sider ripped a skimming device — used by credit card scammers — out of the ATM of a neighborhood Duane Reade on Wednesday and took to the internet to remind others to "stay vigilant."

The skimming device — often crafted to slyly cover and ATM card reader — was found in a Duane Read on Broadway between West 111th and 112th streets, Reddit user Atlas5280 posted. The post, titled "Stay vigilant NYC. Found at my local Duane Reade on the Upper West Side," was up-voted (or "liked") 1580 times by Thursday.

Stay vigilant NYC. Found at my local Duane Reade on the Upper West Side. from nyc

Skimmers are devices installed on ATM machines designed to record private information about credit and debit cards such as card and PIN numbers, according to the security blog Krebs on Security. According to Krebs on Security the devices come in a number of different forms and can record the valuable financial information in a variety of ways.

A scam artist must return to the location of a skimmer and manually recover the the stolen information, which means atlas5280 may have saved many people from a financial headache.

Atlas5280 did not respond to a message sent by Patch.

The post has has been commented on 189 times as of this writing. Most commenters either thanked Atlas5280 for discovering the device, expressed shock that their neighborhood ATM had been compromised or asked questions about how to discover skimming devices (give the card reader a good yank).

Photo by Google Maps street view May 2016