It's like finding out there really are monsters under the bed: Over the weekend, a Seattle man visiting a WaMu ATM noticed there was something peculiar about the card-reader slot. There certainly was -- it was covered by a card skimmer with a battery, card scanner, and mini USB port.

The good news, as reported by Consumerist, is that this is pretty much the first time anyone involved has actually encountered a skimmer installed and operating (presumably; the investigation is ongoing) in the wild. The bad news is that the wee beastie was found not on some random gas-station cash machine, but on an actual bank-maintained ATM. Once upon a time we thought those might be safer from such tampering; so much for that security measure.