So Paula and I were in downtown La Serena (picking up the bridal bouquet for tomorrow's wedding) when we decided to pick up some extra pesos. We stopped at an ATM machine in the entryway to a busy store, swiped the card and entered the top secret PIN number. As I was then moving through the options to get to the peso withdrawal a woman stopped for a moment and whispered in Spanish to be careful that this machine is used to clone cards. Cloning cards involves having a card reader secretly attached to the ATM to grab the card number during the transaction (and the PIN?) and having someone nearby that casually noticed what PIN you use.
Hmmm...
I canceled the transaction and we headed off to find a collectivo home. Once at home I called the credit union in Seattle using my cellphone (it had enough money on it fortunately) and had the card canceled. A drastic solution - but we can always get pesos using out daughter's card and then pay her back in Seattle. So we're lucky.
The moral of the story - avoid on-street ATMs if there's an option for a more secure in-bank machine nearby...
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