In much of the world, ATM cards are the best way for travelers to access cash, but in Russia ATM fraud is rampant. In 2001 there were some 60,000 cases of ATM fraud in Moscow alone. If you do use ATMs here, be sure to use machines associated with known banking institutions and avoid stand-alone machines commonly found in metro stations. Credit card fraud is also common, with merchants often double swiping cards, once for the purchase, and once to capture the data on a storage device for later use. Don’t let your card out of your sight. On another note, in one week in March there were four separate incidents of assaults on American students in different cities: Moscow, Novgorod, Vladimir and Vladivostok. The pattern in the assaults was robbery of foreigners rather than anti-American sentiment.
