skimmed

so Thursday after work we are barbecuing up dinner, and I run across the street to get sodas. I didn't have any case, so I used my card to get cash-and it comes up with a message saying I had reached my withdrawl limit for the day. This was really odd since all I had done was purchased 1 burrito-so I ran back across the street and checked my account online. Holy shit. $500 had mysteriously been withdrawn that same day, and even odder, it was taken out all in one $500 ATM withdrawl in Decatur, Georgia. So I'm pretty much wigging out and fumbling over my own fingers trying to dial the numbers to the bank so I can get the whole process of dragging my money back out of them underway. They were nice enough, cancelled my debit card and sent me a new one, but it also takes "about five business days" for them to credit the money back (which will probably roughly translate to about a week and a half more likely than not) I could not understand how whoever did this could get my card # and PIN and then Sunday night the local news had an article on skimming-a fun creepy new identity theft deal-the person in the story also had $500 withdrawn from her account-also in Decatur, GA. Essentially skimming works by putting a fake front on an ATM that reads your card # as it passes through into the real ATM machine. A hidden camera is stuck in something that looks over the ATM keypad (like a little thing full of bank pamphlets of something) they videotape you entering your PIN, the card reader takes down your number, they make a bogus card and then withdraw the money elsewhere. (Illustrations of all this are available here.) On the upside Gabe and I went and saw the Church of the Psychedelic/White Rainbow CD release party and it was a beautiful night of sitting on the floor listening to beautiful washes of sound.