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2026-07-14 11:46:20 UTC

Col on Nostr: The story that if you enter your PIN at an ATM backwards it triggers a silent police ...

The story that if you enter your PIN at an ATM backwards it triggers a silent police alert is not true. A Chicago businessman named Joseph Zingher did patent a system called SafetyPIN in 1998. That’s the little fact that kept this myth alive. Every bank he pitched it to passed. They actually opposed it, worried a panicked person would fumble the reversal and make a robbery worse. And there’s the palindrome problem. If your PIN is 2002 or 7337, there’s nothing to reverse. So, yeah, doesn’t work.