“I received an e-mail that said if you are at an ATM and wish to report a potentially dangerous situation, you can enter your pin number backwards to alert the police. Is this true or just an urban myth?”
This is a great question and a common urban myth about ATMs. If you use the internet, you have probably been exposed to a number of these urban myths through e-mail chain letters. The truth is, this is completely false. Financial institutions in the United States, including Arvest Bank, have not deployed any technology of this sort to date. Entering your PIN backwards will result in nothing more than a denial of your transaction.
An even bigger obstacle to this solution would be numbers that are the same, regardless of which way they were entered. 4884, 1441, 0880, etc. Customers select their own PINs privately so there would be no way to prevent these instances.
Snopes.com, a website dedicated to researching and debunking urban myths provides what they believe to be the explanation behind the myth. A system similar to the one mentioned was envisioned in 1994 and patented in 1998 by Joseph Zingher, a Chicago businessman. However, Zingher had very little success in interesting financial institutions in his design and therefore this system was never implemented.
Although entering your PIN backwards is a myth, there are things you can do to help ensure your security at an ATM:
• Perform your ATM transactions in a well-lit, public location free of shrubbery or partitions which may restrict view of your surroundings
• Do not access the ATM for your transaction if someone appears to be crowding you or trying to see you enter your PIN
• Maintain constant awareness of your surroundings throughout the entire transaction
• Never count cash at the machine or in public, but wait until you are in a secure location
• When using a drive-up ATM from a vehicle, keep your engine running, your doors locked and leave enough room to maneuver between your car and the one ahead of you in the drive-up line
• Always monitor your account with web banking or mobile banking to watch for unauthorized transactions, and report these to the bank immediately