Are ATM's Safe?

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Nearly everyone here has used an ATM (otherwise known as a 'cash machine' or a 'hole in the wall') to withdraw cash. Some of us are aware that criminals have ways of defrauding people by tampering with the machine to copy your card details and various other methods. I would hope that, by now, everyone takes the elementary precautions of checking the card slot, looking for a camera above the keypad and covering your hand as you enter the PIN. Unfortunately, however, ATMs are even less secure than we thought them to be because the operating system which they use is Windows XP, which Microsoft stopped supporting two years ago in April 2014. Also, the software which runs on ATMs and is used to contact the bank uses an old communication standard (XFS) which is far from secure. As a result, criminals can find it relatively easy to install malware on the ATMs which can track transactions, harvest information (including your PIN) and even force a machine to pay out all of the money it contains. This sort of attack began several years ago in Russia and the Ukraine but it is on the rise and there have been similar attacks worldwide. You can read more about it in the article below by Kaspersky. Of course, if the machine you are using is infected, then the bank which owns it is liable if you lose money because of it and you would have a strong case for recompense in any court but nobody wants to have their personal information and bank account compromised or to have to prove that any loss was the bank's fault! http://securelist.com/analysis/publications/74533/malware-and-non-malware-ways-for-atm-jackpotting-extended-cut/