SF author Diane Duane had her ATM card skimmed and her bank account has been cleaned out. To help her pay her bills, she's offering a 20% discount on all her ebooks at ebooksdirect. Use the discount code DDGOTSKIMMED at checkout.

She should be protected against most of the fraudulent transactions unless she's with a really sh*tty bank.

And no one should have anything but working money attached to an ATM card. Never, never savings or other accumulation accounts.

You mean like Wells Fargo, or Citibank, or Bank of America, or ... oh heck, let's just call it all of them?

If you like. I've never had an account without stop-loss and fraud protection. Nor do I pay ATM fees, anywhere.

People who choose a bank for the wrong reasons and stay with it for worse ones have no more grounds for complaint than someone who buys a used car with a bad history from a shady dealer. Better options are always available if it's worth a few minutes to look and an hour or so to switch over.

But people persist in the notion that banks are some sort of public-service, quasi-governmental "agency" that owes them free services and would never, ever, you know, treat them like... customers.

I'm sorry to hear that DD got scraped - were were acquaintances once, back in the days when forums represented a community - but it is 100% avoidable and 99% 'insurable' if you aren't being an ostrich.