Hyderabad: Soon you will not be able to use an ATM within the limits of the Cyberabad police commissionerate during off-peak hours, that is, between 11 pm and 6 am. Banks have taken this decision following a meeting between police and bank officials.
The shutdown is in order to prevent the misuse of ATMs by criminals who chose off-peak hours to insert skimmers to steal customers’ data and make fraudulent transactions.
The coordination meeting at the Cyberabad commissionerate in Gachibowli was held on June 30, and attended by representatives of several banks, including the Reserve Bank of India, State Bank of India, HDFC, ICICI, and Ratnakar Bank.
The proposal to close the ATMs at night came from the bankers, who have the discretion to halt services of the cash vending machines.
"ATMs with less than five transactions during off-peak hours will be identified by the banks and the services of such centres will be halted. The off-peak hours are the times chosen by the fraudsters to commit offences," said sources close to the Cyberabad police. In the month of May, cyber crime sleuths arrested two Romanian nationals, Vasiel Gabriel Razvan and Buricea Alexandru Mihai, in Mumbai, and recovered 196 cloned cards and '35 lakh withdrawn fraudulently from bank accounts.
The gang had taken only 90 seconds to install skimmers and cameras in ATM centres during off-peak hours, to capture debit card data of customers. In a span of three months the gang managed to collect data of 2,000 customers and withdrew money from 556 accounts across the country. Forty-five of these accounts were of customers living in the Cyberabad commissionerate limits, while others were from Mumbai and Delhi. Banks have also decided to install anti-skimming software in ATMs as well as installing CCTV cameras and engaging security guards, said a police official from Cyberabad.
Cyberabad Police Commissioner V. C. Sajjanar said, "It is the decision of the bankers to halt the services during off-peak hours and they act upon the guidelines of the RBI. The police did not ask or force the bankers, as the discretion lies with the bankers... The bankers also opined that closure of the ATM centres for a short period would help the banks to reduce operational costs."
It has not yet been decided when the closure will be implemented.
