Japan installs cellphone jammers near ATMs to prevent fraud

If you're tired of being scammed at ATMs by kind, gentle-hearted con artists (and then forgetting it ever happened), you'll be stoked to know that Japan is looking out for you. Chiba Bank has installed phone signal jammers at four unnamed ATMs at bank branches in the Tokyo region, and while it has gone down as the first institution to go to such lengths, we highly doubt it'll be the last. It's not entirely clear what exactly the criminals were able to convince people to do via mobile, but it's probably something like "psst... get me out some cheddar and meet around back." Not that we have any experience in the field or anything...

[Via textually]

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 10th 2008 8:08PM]

Probably has more to do with preventing card skimming devices that are sometimes attached to the front of the machines from phoning home with the customer's card & PIN info.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/10/atm-skimmers-now-with-sms-notification-built-right-in/

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 10th 2008 8:25PM]

Yea was gonna say that.

Quite clever.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 11th 2008 1:18AM]

Actually, it's to prevent people from receiving instructions over the phone from scam artists on where to wire money using the ATM. It's been a huge problem lately, with unsuccessful police deployments to keep people from using their phones at the ATMs.

Read this page for more: http://www.shinseibank.com/english/direct/case/07.html

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 11th 2008 1:51AM]

I guess no one see's a little bit of big brother in this one.. no not at all..

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 11th 2008 9:04AM]

Big brother watches convo's not blocks them....

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 11th 2008 1:11PM]

Actually, the amount of criminals with pacemakers is ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE.

Like 99%.

They can't go near these things.