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.
Published at
2026-07-14 11:46:20 UTCEvent JSON
{
"id": "d4dc9ec96ca0ddef613c968889916f263f493254326b3129055fb2a17728aae9",
"pubkey": "f64925602619b1b552cb7cef3d2d2f91ca625c8185910892df6bbc2feaa8c0de",
"created_at": 1784029580,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"proxy",
"https://mstdn.social/users/kibcol1049/statuses/116918162581655271",
"activitypub"
],
[
"client",
"Mostr",
"31990:6be38f8c63df7dbf84db7ec4a6e6fbbd8d19dca3b980efad18585c46f04b26f9:mostr",
"wss://relay.ditto.pub"
]
],
"content": "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.",
"sig": "e26287e8d6aa6aabcfa1fdef023a7f2803518ec5e21e2b63055a3d16af7d8aa508675da344ff030622b82b12f0f5492505e0068ee51d829f4f405727d2c9cd3f"
}