If you ever swipe your card at a gas station pump, withdraw cash from an ATM, or buy tickets from a vending machine, then you are at risk.

Travel scams seem to be rife these days, with people targeting tourists to try to trick them out of their money or get them to sign up to dodgy deals.

One of the more brash ways scammers are doing thing is with card skimmers – fake devices designed to steal your credit card information in a matter of seconds.

The typical card skimmer is a device smaller than a deck of cards that fits over the existing card reader of an ATM. Most of the time, the attackers will also place a hidden camera somewhere in the vicinity with a view of the number pad in order to record personal-identification-numbers. The camera may be in the card reader, mounted at the top of the ATM, or even just to the side inside a plastic case holding brochures. Some criminals may install a fake PIN pad over the actual keyboard to capture the PIN directly, bypassing the need for a camera.

When you are grabbing money out of the ATM, the last thing you want to worry about is your card information getting stolen.

The chances of getting hit by a skimmer are higher on the weekend than during the week, since it’s harder for customers to report the suspicious ATMs to the bank. Criminals typically install skimmers on Saturdays or Sundays, and then remove them before the banks reopen on Monday.

How do you avoid being a victim?

When you approach an ATM, check for some obvious signs of tampering at the top of the ATM, near the speakers, the side of the screen, the card reader itself, and the keyboard. If something looks different, such as a different colour or material, graphics that aren’t aligned correctly, or anything else that doesn’t look right, don’t use that ATM.

It’s a good idea to quickly take a look at the ATM next to yours and compare them both. If there are any obvious differences, don’t use either one, and report the suspicious tampering to your bank. For example, if one ATM has a flashing card entry to show where you should enter the ATM card and the other ATM has a plain reader slot, you know something is wrong. Since most skimmers are glued on top of the existing reader, that will obscure the flashing indicator.

If the keyboard doesn’t feel right—too thick, perhaps—then there may be a PIN-snatching overlay, so don’t use it.

Have you ever been affected by a scam on holiday? How did you deal with it?