ATM skimmers
Dec. 9th, 2013 09:36 pmFrom an industry which brought you such previous hits as "sending you an email from a suspicious looking domain asking you to go to a particular website and enter your password", I see banks have started "attaching suspicious-looking objects to the front of ATM card-slots with a sign saying it is 'for security' with no further explanation".
Seriously, why? Whywhywhywhy? I mean, I know WHY they're there (to stop someone fitting an ATM skimmer over the top, assuming ATM-skimmer designers are slower to innovate that multinational banking institutions). But at no point during this process did anyone stop to think "is training customers to ignore suspicious objects the WORST POSSIBLE THING we could do"?
Or this just a way of making it the customer's fault if anything goes wrong?
I saw one of these are the weekend, and got paranoid because anti-skimming devices and skimming-devices seem to look exactly the same. Am I missing any obvious clues?
Why don't they have a photo of how the ATM is SUPPOSED to look? Preferably behind glass, or on a website? The human brain is actually REALLY GOOD at spotting exceptions to patterns, even in fields they have no security expertise at all, provided you don't deliberately sabotage it in advance.
Seriously, why? Whywhywhywhy? I mean, I know WHY they're there (to stop someone fitting an ATM skimmer over the top, assuming ATM-skimmer designers are slower to innovate that multinational banking institutions). But at no point during this process did anyone stop to think "is training customers to ignore suspicious objects the WORST POSSIBLE THING we could do"?
Or this just a way of making it the customer's fault if anything goes wrong?
I saw one of these are the weekend, and got paranoid because anti-skimming devices and skimming-devices seem to look exactly the same. Am I missing any obvious clues?
Why don't they have a photo of how the ATM is SUPPOSED to look? Preferably behind glass, or on a website? The human brain is actually REALLY GOOD at spotting exceptions to patterns, even in fields they have no security expertise at all, provided you don't deliberately sabotage it in advance.