In a time when major data hacks are on the rise—think Target, Home Depot, Sony—it’s no surprise breaches on individuals are also up. According to FICO, debit-card compromises at ATMs rose 174% from January to April of this year, compared to the same period last year.
And that’s just breaches of ATMs located on official bank property. Successful breaches at non-bank ATMs rose 317% in that period.
In other words, withdrawing money from an ATM is more dangerous than it’s been in a long time—specifically, the worst it has been in two decades, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cites a prediction from consulting firm Tremont Capital Group that criminals will make more than 1.5 million successful ATM cash withdrawals this year.
As Fortune reported earlier this year, a majority of American corporations believe they will be hacked in 2015. The questions they are all dealing with is how to prepare for them and how to deal with them when they happen, because preventing these compromises has become increasingly difficult.
Banking institutions, as well as the payment companies that connect banks to consumers, like Visa and MasterCard, have beefed up their technology more aggressively than ever in order to both innovate and securitize. But for a private consumer who simply wants to take money from an ATM, stats like these are nonetheless sobering.
