Last December, Paul Wiegmans from Alkmaar discovered an ATM skimming device (Dutch) attached to an NS ticket vending machine (Nederlandse Spoorwegen, i.e. Dutch railways). Being a hacker, he pulled the device loose and photographed it extensively before turning it in to the police. Marvel at the diminutive size of these things!

The Nederlandse Bank estimates that skimming at train stations and banks results in ten million euro in damages per year, reports Algemeen Dagblad (Dutch). The NS told the same daily that approximately two skimming accidents occur per day at its train stations. That’s a rather small amount compared to the number of ATM transactions taking place per day there—200,000.

Update: Meanwhile, Salima Douhou and Jan Magnus of the University of Tilburg claim that skimming would become almost impossible if banks incorporated code that would verify the way people type their PIN codes, reports De Telegraaf (Dutch). Apparently, nobody does that quite the same way, making your punch as distinct as your signature. The article unfortunately doesn’t mention what the percentage of false positives is with this method, and calls the method “almost unhackable”, which in this reality means the same as positively hackable.

(Photo: Paul Wiegmans.)

When I first talked to a Lebanese-Dutch coffeeshop owner back in, oh, 1997 when I was just visiting the Netherlands, he told me that even though coffeeshops are legal, kids won’t wave to their coffeeshop owner on the street when off shopping with their parents. In other words, they definitely are of a lesser breed, just like sex industry workers. Imagine some guy saying a casual ‘hello’ to his favourite ‘pro’ at the snack bar while grabbing a burger with his mates.

And now in 2009 Dutch banks are refusing to let sex industry businesses open bank accounts, with the excuse that they are responsible for the trafficking of women and money laundering. The VER association, which represents sex businesses, is really pissed at the banks, although oddly enough, if a business has a “neutral sounding name”, it can open a bank account without any problems. Some truth is out there, read the Dutch link below.

Trafficking of women and money laundering, you say? Sure there’s a chance, but it can’t possibly be that bad. And what, the idea of such terrible practices only popped into the banks’ head in 2009? Are they on drugs? Hey banks, didn’t you cause this crisis we’re in?

The world is going mad – stay tuned!

(Link: z24.nl)

Tour company Amsterdam Excursies has decided to profit from the financial crisis by organizing themed guided tours of the financial history of Amsterdam. It’s Crisis Tour starts at the Zeedijk, where the first share in the world was traded in 1606, and ends on the Spuistraat at De Keuken van 1870, the oldest and only still extant soup kitchen of the city. Other crises touched upon during the tour are the collapse of Tulip Mania in 1637, and the end of the Dutch Golden Age.

Via the print edition of NL20. Photo of the VOC HQ (East India Company) by Josh, distributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2.

The Dutch never really warmed to the idea of the credit card, and generally consider it unsafe for online transactions. The new kid on the block, the iDeal system, is rapidly gaining ground, according to the organisation controlling several popular payment methods for the major Dutch banks, Currence, who also run the iDeal system (press release in Dutch). It works like this: at the check-out of an online store, a customer clicks on the iDeal logo, and gets the electronic banking interface of their own bank. In this interface, the required sum is transfered immediately to the shop keeper.

iDeal has shot up from being used for 1% of all online payments in its first year, 2005, to 15% in 2006. Paying by credit card has dropped in popularity from 19% to 13%. Of all Dutch online shoppers, 73% consider iDeal to be a safe system, whereas only 32% think the same of credit cards.

According to ZDnet (Dutch), using acceptgiros (deposit transfer cards) and a bank’s online banking system directly are the most popular forms of payment.

(Image source: Lotus Head.)