Report: 1,500 Nonlicensed ATMs In City Endangering Personal Data
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It may seem convenient to use the bank machine at the corner deli, but some city lawmakers warn that the ritual could deliver financial information into the wrong hands. A City Council survey released yesterday found that 57% of 339 delis had automated-teller machines, or ATMs, and estimated that about 1,500 of the nonlicensed machines are in operation citywide.
The chairman of the council’s Committee on Oversight and Investigations, Eric Gioia, announced that he would introduce a bill next week to require the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs to register and license those machines. As it stands now, the Queens Democrat said, almost anyone can purchase an ATM without notifying an official source and move the machine at will.
Unlike bank ATMs, which are regulated by the New York State Banking Department, there is no oversight or database that tracks where private ATMs are located or who operates them.
“These ATMs can be easily manipulated to obtain personal information,” Mr. Gioia said. The Manhattan district attorney, Robert Morgenthau, who joined Mr. Gioia at a City Hall news conference, said 8% or 9% of all felony cases his office deals with are related to identity theft.
“It’s the street crime, it’s the mugging of 2004 and 2005,” Mr. Morgenthau said. “It used to be your money or your life. Now it’s your credit card and all of your personal information.”
Mr. Morgenthau, who is running for his ninth term, said Mr. Gioia’s proposed legislation would help to solve part of the problem of identity theft. Mr. Gioia said that without any tracking system, the ATMs allow “unscrupulous” individuals to copy users’ bank account numbers, PINs, Social Security numbers, and other personal information.
The investigation by Mr. Gioia’s committee found that the machines can be purchased for only $1,000 or leased for as little as $75 a month. It also noted that New York City accounts for two thirds of identity-theft cases in the state and that the city had the ninth highest per-capita rate of identity theft in the country in 2003, with 10,641 victims.
Some of the companies that manufacture and sell the ATMs privately do track sales on their own, but Mr. Gioia said his legislation would create an industry-wide standard. A spokesman for the mayor, Jordan Barowitz, said the administration would review the proposal once it moved forward and the council held a hearing on it.
