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06 December
eRumor / Hoax - PIN NUMBER REVERSAL (GOOD TO KNOW)
Here is another eRumor / Hoax floating around on the Internet, which was also forwarded to us via chain e-mail.
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PIN NUMBER REVERSAL (GOOD TO KNOW)
If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM machine, you can notify the police by entering your Pin # in reverse.
For example if your pin number is 1234 then you would put in 4321. The ATM recognizes that your pin number is backwards from the ATM card you placed in the machine. The machine will still give you the money you requested, but unknown to the robber, the police will be immediately dispatched to help you.
This information was recently broadcasted on TV and it states that it is seldom used because people don't know it exists. Please pass this along to everyone possible.---------------
The Truth:
While this system seems plausible and could be quite effective, this is still just a rumor / hoax. This was proposed by a Joseph Zingher in 1994 (patented 1998) but still hasn't been adopted by banks. In any case, such a useful functionality would be advertised or customers informed about by banks, should the feature really exist.
For a complete rundown and analysis of the issue, visit
this page.
Comments
I’m Joe Zingher, the inventor of the ReversePIN system referred to on this website. There’s a great deal of disinformation about the system and it’s usefulness put out by magazines, official government agencies and banking industry. For instance, Forbes magazine claims that IBM holds an emergency PIN patent of its own.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id... and I’m somehow trapped in a life and death struggle with them. Contact Forbes and ask them what the IBM patent number is. They refuse to tell me.
The Illinois Office of Banks and Real Estate issued an official report claiming that the system requires some kind of “physical reconfiguration” of the ATM or “hardware changes”
http://www.obre.state.il.us... The author of the report claims that it was a lawyer who told him this. He claims that at the time he wrote it, he was under the impression that it needs “new data transmission lines to handle the more intelligent communications.” I guess if you discuss the Chicago Cubs on the telephone, you use one type of telephone line, but if you’re discussing quantum physics, you have to use a different, special kind of telephone line. This is obviously incorrect to anyone who has had even a single course in computer programming. So why isn’t the system in place then? The vast majority of the public seems to like it a lot. Well, I am not the authorized spokesman for the US banking industry, but here’s a short list of the claims I’ve heard about my system and why it’s not being used.
1) “An international treaty forbids it from being adopted. This treaty sets the technical standards for ATM transactions.” Actually, there’s no such treaty. It sounds like a great explanation though and one that the layman might buy.
2) “You’d have to issue all new ATM cards, costing $5 each to put the system in place. The system is terribly expensive and not worth it.” This is false too. You don’t change the card at all. All that is done is a small change in the PIN verification section of the code. This can be either at the ATM as part of the normal software upgrades or at the main link where the PIN verification software is. The invention is “transparent” to the existing software.
3) “Who could remember their ReversePIN with a gun at their neck at the ATM? It won’t work.” This is misleading because it defines a DIFFERENT crime than the one intended to be deterred. The crime pattern begins as a hostage taking in a carjacking from a parking lot or during a home invasion; the victim is then taken to an ATM and forced to make a withdrawal; then the victim is taken elsewhere, executed and the body hidden so that no one will cancel the card. There’s a LOT of lag time between the initial assault and the first withdrawal for the victim to get their wits about them. Further, EVEN PEOPLE WHO CANNOT USE THE SYSTEM BENEFIT from it. The criminal cannot know what is going on until it is too late. The goal is to get him to grab the money and run, and leave the hostage behind and hopefully unhurt. Moreover, there will be some people who can always use the system and that means they generate an umbrella of deterrence for the rest of society. Since the criminal can’t know for sure before the attack begins, does the attack ever begin?
4) “If our state makes it mandatory, that means some customer from out of state won’t be able to use the ATM at all.” Why on earth would you program the computer that way? That’s just stupid.
5) “What if your PIN in reverse is someone else’s regular PIN? It would shut down the system.” Excuse me, but your PIN is already being used by at least tens of thousands of other people already. The PIN is connected to the bank account number and the bank identification number. Think about it. From “0000” to “9999” there are only 10,000 possible variations on a four-digit PIN. There are over two hundred million ATM cards in the US alone. (A PIN like 2442 is handled by the “Inside-OutPIN 4224 and a PIN like 7777 is handled by the “Plus-1PIN” 8888. Get the idea here?)
The list of ridiculous claims is just too long. And they keep changing. What does it tell you when “experts” keep coming up with different false claims about the system? By the way, to be an ACTUAL expert in the technical aspects of it, you need to have some background in computer programming, say an associate’s degree.
So what’s the real reason it’s not being used? All their answers are different. That in itself should tell you something. Here’s a thought. If you’re the head of marketing at a bank, how many of these murders per year involving your ATMs makes you jump up and down yelling “HOORAY!!! We only had “X” murders this year that involved our customers being kidnapped and forced to make ATM withdrawals”? I think that is where the root of the problem lies.
Joe Zingher
http://atmsafetypin.com
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The Illinois Office of Banks and Real Estate issued an official report claiming that the system requires some kind of “physical reconfiguration” of the ATM or “hardware changes” http://www.obre.state.il.us... The author of the report claims that it was a lawyer who told him this. He claims that at the time he wrote it, he was under the impression that it needs “new data transmission lines to handle the more intelligent communications.” I guess if you discuss the Chicago Cubs on the telephone, you use one type of telephone line, but if you’re discussing quantum physics, you have to use a different, special kind of telephone line. This is obviously incorrect to anyone who has had even a single course in computer programming. So why isn’t the system in place then? The vast majority of the public seems to like it a lot. Well, I am not the authorized spokesman for the US banking industry, but here’s a short list of the claims I’ve heard about my system and why it’s not being used.
1) “An international treaty forbids it from being adopted. This treaty sets the technical standards for ATM transactions.” Actually, there’s no such treaty. It sounds like a great explanation though and one that the layman might buy.
2) “You’d have to issue all new ATM cards, costing $5 each to put the system in place. The system is terribly expensive and not worth it.” This is false too. You don’t change the card at all. All that is done is a small change in the PIN verification section of the code. This can be either at the ATM as part of the normal software upgrades or at the main link where the PIN verification software is. The invention is “transparent” to the existing software.
3) “Who could remember their ReversePIN with a gun at their neck at the ATM? It won’t work.” This is misleading because it defines a DIFFERENT crime than the one intended to be deterred. The crime pattern begins as a hostage taking in a carjacking from a parking lot or during a home invasion; the victim is then taken to an ATM and forced to make a withdrawal; then the victim is taken elsewhere, executed and the body hidden so that no one will cancel the card. There’s a LOT of lag time between the initial assault and the first withdrawal for the victim to get their wits about them. Further, EVEN PEOPLE WHO CANNOT USE THE SYSTEM BENEFIT from it. The criminal cannot know what is going on until it is too late. The goal is to get him to grab the money and run, and leave the hostage behind and hopefully unhurt. Moreover, there will be some people who can always use the system and that means they generate an umbrella of deterrence for the rest of society. Since the criminal can’t know for sure before the attack begins, does the attack ever begin?
4) “If our state makes it mandatory, that means some customer from out of state won’t be able to use the ATM at all.” Why on earth would you program the computer that way? That’s just stupid.
5) “What if your PIN in reverse is someone else’s regular PIN? It would shut down the system.” Excuse me, but your PIN is already being used by at least tens of thousands of other people already. The PIN is connected to the bank account number and the bank identification number. Think about it. From “0000” to “9999” there are only 10,000 possible variations on a four-digit PIN. There are over two hundred million ATM cards in the US alone. (A PIN like 2442 is handled by the “Inside-OutPIN 4224 and a PIN like 7777 is handled by the “Plus-1PIN” 8888. Get the idea here?)
The list of ridiculous claims is just too long. And they keep changing. What does it tell you when “experts” keep coming up with different false claims about the system? By the way, to be an ACTUAL expert in the technical aspects of it, you need to have some background in computer programming, say an associate’s degree.
So what’s the real reason it’s not being used? All their answers are different. That in itself should tell you something. Here’s a thought. If you’re the head of marketing at a bank, how many of these murders per year involving your ATMs makes you jump up and down yelling “HOORAY!!! We only had “X” murders this year that involved our customers being kidnapped and forced to make ATM withdrawals”? I think that is where the root of the problem lies.
Joe Zingher
http://atmsafetypin.com