Youtuber Mark Rober demonstrates this new simple way for con artists to steal your ATM pin code without you noticing. Fortunately, the way to prevent this from happening is also very simple.

Your ATM pin code can be stolen discreetly, without you noticing at all. It’s because the con artist doesn’t even need to make an effort to take it from you! They can even steal it from you, even while you aren’t there!

How do they do this? One underhanded tactic is to use infrared cameras. Let’s say you go shopping at the supermarket, and you walk up to the counter to make your purchase with an ATM card. The last thing you do to complete your purchase is to enter a pin number.

Now as you’ve guessed, the con artist uses a discreet infrared camera, and can determine your pin number by using the heat signature you’ve left behind. This heat signature is open for 15 minutes, until it completely dissipates. Until then, this gives the con artist a window of opportunity to steal your pin code. This also includes door security systems, or anything that includes keys to be pressed.

The infrared camera was manufactured by a company called FLIR, a company which sells thermal imaging and infrared systems. This new infrared device just came out of the market and can be directly hooked up to the back of a smartphone. Back then, thermal imaging cameras were huge and expensive. Now, they only cost a hundred dollars and can be found at any Apple store.

A research conducted by USCD (University of San Diego, California) claimed that while using thermal imaging systems, they were able to guess the pin code 80% of the time if the image was taken right after the keys were pressed. Even if the image was taken a full 1-minute later, they still had a 50/50 chance of guessing the code correctly.

So, how exactly do you protect yourself from this? Metal keypads will absorb very little heat, and the heat signature dissipates quickly. However, if you are not using a metal keypad, here’s a little tip that you can do very quickly to protect yourself from harm. Just simply, rest your fingers on other buttons while you type in your code! It will hinder your original code from potential threats. As an added bonus, the bad guy might be watching you, so position yourself so that others can’t see you type in your code.