Wednesday, November 29, 2006

How effective is "Reverse the PIN" solution?

I have heard about cases in which the person is forced by a robber to withdraw cash from ATM machine. To summon the Police, the PIN number should be typed in reverse. The ATM gives the cash, however, and also inform the Police simultaneously. The ATM dispatches the cash not to tempt the robber to kill the person. Some of my friends raised an issue how to tackle with palindrome PINs. This is a good thought, in fact. I recommend that instead of avoiding palindrome PINs in usage, we need to come-up with alternative solutions for the prevailing problem. In this article, I have listed few solutions which, I feel, is very practical to realize.

1. The threatened person while typing the PIN has to enter an extra digit at the end, for eg. #9. It has to be typed very quickly so that robber cannot recognize it. To make this solution more effective, there should be variable length PIN numbers permitted to exist in usage.

2. This solution is about typing speed. It's observed recently that typing speed is unique to a person. Accounting this info, I suggest that during odd situations, the person has to change the typing speed, which will indicate the police that there is an abnormality.

3. We could have an ATM Location Code (ALC) written somewhere on the screen. The PIN number has to be entered prefixing/suffixing the ALC. The PIN number with ALC indicates a threat. Of course, it's required to type it unnoticeably fast.

4. There should be vigilant cameras in the ATM center intelligent enough to discover the odd face feelings/patterns indicating the threatened posture of the person. To paraphrase, the camera software should be able to figure out anomalies. Once confirmed, the police will be alarmed.

Many a times such odd situations occur at nights. The sensitive levels of some of the above proposed solutions could be increased during nights to detect such odd behaviors more effectively.

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