A bank account password was stolen while a woman was taking out cash at an ATM, the Southern Metropolitan News reported Thursday.

The woman, surnamed Liu, subsequently lost more than 4,000 yuan (US$480) from her bank account, the report said.

Liu went to an ATM at a branch of the Agriculture Bank of China near Nanyou Hotel in Nanshan District on Tuesday. A young man was standing behind her when she withdrew cash from the machine.

"He seemed to be impatient and when I was ready to leave, he bumped into me," Liu told the newspaper Wednesday.

When Liu returned home, she found her bank card missing.

She checked the balance of her account by telephone and found more than 4,000 yuan was missing.

When she went to consult the bank, a clerk told her that her password must have been stolen.

"The thief might have put a thin transparent coating on the keys of the ATM to obtain the password from Liu's finger prints," the clerk said.

As the Spring Festival draws near, more people are using ATMs to avoid long queues in banks. People were advised to be careful if anyone was acting suspiciously around ATMs and to carefully examine the keys of the ATM before keying in their bank account passwords.

Editor: Catherine