Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff looks dot com. Hello everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette, and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me, as always today looks a little
Speaker 1: withdrawn his senior writer, Jonathan Strickland. They say the best
Speaker 1: things in life are free. You're such a card. Today
Speaker 1: we're going funds out of the way. Early to they
Speaker 1: were gonna talk about automated teller machines or a t
Speaker 1: M machines. We'll also be talking about personal identification numbers
Speaker 1: or pen numbers. Five people just paused the podcast so
Speaker 1: that they could write us an angry email about the redundancy.
Speaker 1: They probably also went ahead and unsubscribed. Possibly yeah, but
Speaker 1: we in case just for you people who have those
Speaker 1: pet peeves. And I totally understand. I'm nothing. I share
Speaker 1: those pet peeves. I am not criticizing. You may very
Speaker 1: well hear me say a t M machine and or
Speaker 1: pen number at least once in this podcast as a way,
Speaker 1: and and not not in a way to needle you
Speaker 1: just that's it's it's stamped in my brain that way. Well,
Speaker 1: pen number two is also a little bit more useful
Speaker 1: than a t M machine since pen is also a pin.
Speaker 1: Do you have your pen? Yeah? Oh right, no, the
Speaker 1: number exactly? Do you have your personal identification numbers? So yes,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a t M S today, and we've
Speaker 1: had a few people ask us about how a t
Speaker 1: m S work. We assume it was all on the
Speaker 1: up and up, not to find out how they work
Speaker 1: so that you can exploit them. I did find out
Speaker 1: an article about how to hack into one. Wow. Well,
Speaker 1: and that gets a little complicated. We'll talk about that.
Speaker 1: Why that is the Yeah, because it really does depend.
Speaker 1: But first let's talk about how a t m S
Speaker 1: came to be. That's somewhat in dispute. Yes, um, there
Speaker 1: there are multiple people who were inventing things that resemble
Speaker 1: what a t M S are today in different parts
Speaker 1: of the world around the same time, although the earliest
Speaker 1: one I could find was from a Mr. Luther sim
Speaker 1: Jean Yes, who was born in Turkey. I was a
Speaker 1: son of Armenians who were Sadly his family was was
Speaker 1: broken up during a genocide in the early twentieth century,
Speaker 1: and he uh. He eventually immigrated to the United States,
Speaker 1: and he came up with an idea that eventually he
Speaker 1: called the bank matic Automated teller machine. So that's where
Speaker 1: we get a t M. That's he's the one who
Speaker 1: came up with the term. And this was around nineteen nine.
Speaker 1: But this was doesn't resemble the way at M S
Speaker 1: look and and act now. But it was an idea
Speaker 1: of a of an a machine that would dispense money.
Speaker 1: And it was run for a six month trial at
Speaker 1: the City Bank of New York, which we now call
Speaker 1: City Bank. Yes, uh and uh. After the six months,
Speaker 1: the trial ended and City Bank decided not to extend
Speaker 1: the trial, not to implement it and UM, at least
Speaker 1: according to one source I read, the reason behind it
Speaker 1: was that it just didn't get a lot of traction.
Speaker 1: The people. People just didn't want to use a machine
Speaker 1: to interact with their bank accounts. They preferred to have
Speaker 1: a person to person interaction in a bank and UM.
Speaker 1: Apparently the people who were using it were a bunch
Speaker 1: of air dwells. Yeah, I read about that too. Basically,
Speaker 1: they they the idea of being that the only people
Speaker 1: who would not want to talk to a teller. Are
Speaker 1: the people who would prefer that you didn't know they
Speaker 1: were depositing or with drawing money in the first place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're talking about people with ill gotten games, gamblers
Speaker 1: for example, places where gambling was not legal, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you might not want to have to answer
Speaker 1: tricky questions like how did you come upon this sum
Speaker 1: of money my good man? Yes, yes, exactly. So. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that was the first recorded incidents I could find of
Speaker 1: someone trying to create an a t M. Yes, and
Speaker 1: again it was it was an interesting experiment that ultimately
Speaker 1: failed at that time. Yeah. Now, a lot of what
Speaker 1: I read about the early days of a t M
Speaker 1: s UM, they weren't a t M s. They didn't
Speaker 1: function like today's machines do. UM. In some cases you
Speaker 1: needed a special card that wasn't actually tied to your
Speaker 1: your bank account. In fact, a lot of them used
Speaker 1: credit cards instead UM. For a long time, credit cards
Speaker 1: were looked down upon UM. But some of muse special
Speaker 1: vouchers or coins, yes, and the token. Yeah. And in
Speaker 1: Britain you had to, uh, on one of the early trials,
Speaker 1: you had to go inside and get a voucher. You
Speaker 1: would get a ten pound voucher. So if you wanted
Speaker 1: fifty pounds, you have to get five vouchers that would
Speaker 1: you take outside of the machine, which raises the question
Speaker 1: why would you not just go and withdraw the money
Speaker 1: directly while you're there, unless, of course, you just wanted
Speaker 1: the convenience of being able to get at ten pounds
Speaker 1: at any given time in the future. And I guess
Speaker 1: that's the argument you'd have to make, Like, instead of
Speaker 1: walking out the bank with fifty pounds, which you know
Speaker 1: you may or may not need at that time, you
Speaker 1: could have uh, five ten pound vouchers, and then as
Speaker 1: the as you go about your business throughout the coming days,
Speaker 1: you realize, oh, I need some more walking around money
Speaker 1: or getting about money, as I like to say, you
Speaker 1: would go and use one of those vouchers to get
Speaker 1: some more money out. But it did seem to decrease
Speaker 1: the convenience factor of the automated teller machine somewhat. But yeah,
Speaker 1: in this case, you wouldn't need a card with stuff
Speaker 1: and coded on it. You would just need your voucher
Speaker 1: to put in and then it would spit money out.
Speaker 1: It became like a money vending machine. Yeah, yeah, and uh.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty eight in Britain there was a several
Speaker 1: banks used the device UM that would use a card,
Speaker 1: but not a card that you always carried with you.
Speaker 1: It basically worked like the voucher. You'd stick the card
Speaker 1: in the machine, you get your money out, and the
Speaker 1: machine would keep your card, which is kind of a
Speaker 1: pain in the neck. Yeah, it's kind of what happens
Speaker 1: to you now when your machine eats your card and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I've had that happen too. That's not a
Speaker 1: good feeling, is it, um, Yeah, except this time in
Speaker 1: this case we're talking about it doing it on purpose.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. So some of the other players in this space,
Speaker 1: and that's mainly the real development of a t M
Speaker 1: S beyond the early nineteen thirty nine example took place
Speaker 1: in the sixties. So you had people like James Goodfellow,
Speaker 1: who he secured a patent on an a t M
Speaker 1: like machine in nineteen sixty six. He also came up
Speaker 1: with the idea of storing a personal identification number on
Speaker 1: a magnetic strip that would be printed on the back
Speaker 1: of a card, so that would become the a t
Speaker 1: M card eventually. Uh. They also John D. White, who
Speaker 1: invented a free standing automated teller machine. A lot of
Speaker 1: these other machines were built into the corner of a building.
Speaker 1: It was actually part of a larger structure. UM. This
Speaker 1: was more of a free standing um A machine. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then there's John Shepherd Baron, who I think, I
Speaker 1: think most sources I saw credited him as the true
Speaker 1: father of the a t M. Yeah, John Shepherd Baron,
Speaker 1: because he was the guy who created the first real
Speaker 1: fully electronic automated teller machine and uh, and the very
Speaker 1: first one was installed in Barclays Bank in London in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven. But you also had Don Wetzel. Now
Speaker 1: he was working in America and his machine started coming
Speaker 1: out around nineteen eight, and he was known to have
Speaker 1: worked at least in part on Shepherd Baron's work as well.
Speaker 1: He kind of took Shepherd Baron's work and then uh
Speaker 1: change things like enhanced things and drop some things and
Speaker 1: included other things. So uh sort of used as a
Speaker 1: launching point for his own work. So you get a
Speaker 1: lot of conflicting information about who is really the inventor
Speaker 1: of the A t M. I think part of it
Speaker 1: depends on where you're from. If you're from England, then
Speaker 1: it's John Shepherd Baron. Yeah, and uh. Um the National
Speaker 1: Museum of American History, the Smithsonian recognized wetzel Um and
Speaker 1: his company Docutel, which was a baggage handling company UM,
Speaker 1: as the people who created the A t M. So
Speaker 1: it's yeah, I guess. And like I said, it all
Speaker 1: depends on who you ask, sort of like television or radio. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like many other inventors. There's uh the story, the
Speaker 1: real story is far more complicated than just a factoid
Speaker 1: that you'll find in a history book. Yeah. Now, I
Speaker 1: was gonna say. Now, even though in the sixties, UM
Speaker 1: A t M s became a lot more common, banks
Speaker 1: started as uh including them as part of their services. UM.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, Uh, the Fortune article I
Speaker 1: read by Ellen Florian Um and uh Doris Burke and
Speaker 1: Jenny Merrow basically was saying that they quoted a chemical
Speaker 1: bank advertisement and said, UM, on September two, our bank
Speaker 1: will open at nine o'clock and we'll never close again.
Speaker 1: And that was the Rockville Center branch at ten North
Speaker 1: Village Avenue on Long Island. Yeah. The idea being that,
Speaker 1: of course, you could access your account at any time
Speaker 1: and make withdrawals or transfers or whatever without having to
Speaker 1: go into the bank. Because of course, the reason why
Speaker 1: people were coming up with this in the first place
Speaker 1: was for convenience, because bank hours are notoriously um short. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that will people talk about bankers hours, where you know,
Speaker 1: in order to actually go and visit the bank, you
Speaker 1: might have to take time out of your work day
Speaker 1: in order to you know, and then you have to
Speaker 1: go inside a bank and stand in line. See, for
Speaker 1: some of our listeners, this is going to sound completely
Speaker 1: foreign to them because apart from maybe opening up a
Speaker 1: bank account or perhaps going in for a loan or
Speaker 1: something like that, you just don't have to do that anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you want to do the day to
Speaker 1: day stuff, depositing a check, finding out how much money
Speaker 1: you have in the bank, making withdrawal, maybe even transferring
Speaker 1: money between accounts, you can do all that in an
Speaker 1: a t M. Yeah. In some cases, you can do
Speaker 1: some of that through online banking as well. So we've
Speaker 1: we've almost completely eliminated the need to go into a
Speaker 1: physical space. But back in the day, it used to
Speaker 1: be that if you wanted to do anything to do
Speaker 1: with your money. You had to go and stand in
Speaker 1: line and wait to talk to a teller, and then
Speaker 1: they pull up your records and do you do all
Speaker 1: that in person, face to face. And actually in the sixties,
Speaker 1: back when, uh, back when these were launching again, the
Speaker 1: people weren't flocking to them immediately. There were In fact,
Speaker 1: some banks were a little skeptical that people would ever
Speaker 1: want to interact with a machine as opposed to a human.
Speaker 1: They thought that the human interaction was a key component
Speaker 1: of the banking process. And it really wasn't until the
Speaker 1: eighties that A t M s started to truly take off. Well,
Speaker 1: the Fortune article actually has a particular event that they
Speaker 1: credit with the takeoff of the A t M And
Speaker 1: what might that be. Well, as it turns out, it
Speaker 1: took Mother Nature's involvement to spur people to use the
Speaker 1: A t M. According to them, it's not nice to
Speaker 1: fool Mother Nature. No, we know what side of the
Speaker 1: bread your butter? Never mind, all right, go ahead anyway.
Speaker 1: In January in New York they got seventeen inches of snow,
Speaker 1: which slowed business to a crawl because a lot of
Speaker 1: places couldn't open. And they said, um, again, this is
Speaker 1: citing the Fortune article. Um, there was a commercial that
Speaker 1: City Bank released saying, UM, you know, hey, you can
Speaker 1: use these machines anytime, whether the bank's open or not. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they had a new tagline, the City Never sleeps
Speaker 1: um and it said, um, there the machines used increased
Speaker 1: during the storm, and uh. City banks market share in
Speaker 1: New York City deposits had doubled, and so the rest
Speaker 1: of the banks moved to catch up. And that basically
Speaker 1: started a revolution, at least in New York. Um. Of
Speaker 1: course that's a lot of people, so that that can
Speaker 1: affect things. And people go in there and see how
Speaker 1: people are using the A t M s and they
Speaker 1: go back home. Yep. Yeah, And like I said, in
Speaker 1: the eighties that really started to take off. So I
Speaker 1: guess now we can finally start getting into what makes
Speaker 1: up an A t M and how they how they
Speaker 1: actually work. Uh. Now, part of this involves the way
Speaker 1: that we access the A t M s uh. And
Speaker 1: and not just with the key the keypad or the
Speaker 1: touch screen depending upon the model that you're using, but
Speaker 1: the card you have, your A t M card, whatever
Speaker 1: you're using to access the A t M. And there
Speaker 1: are variations on this, but all of them have a
Speaker 1: magnetic stripe or mag stripe on them. And uh, you
Speaker 1: might say, well, what the heck is a magnetic stripe, Well,
Speaker 1: it's kind of what sounds like it's a uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's a plastic like film. It's on the back of
Speaker 1: your card that has lots and lots and lots of
Speaker 1: tiny iron based magnetic particles. Yes, as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: it's very similar, if not nearly identical to the material
Speaker 1: that they used to use in recording tape cassette tape
Speaker 1: cassette tapes, real to real tapes, eight track tapes, also
Speaker 1: floppy disks. The material inside there, I mean, that's even
Speaker 1: most of them are even the same brownish color. Right.
Speaker 1: And the way you right to this strip is that
Speaker 1: you you magnetize these little particles. Each of the particles
Speaker 1: acts like its own bar magnet, right, and you magnetize
Speaker 1: them to either have a north or south pole direction
Speaker 1: on each particle, and so that's like bits, zeros and ones.
Speaker 1: So by creating them in either a north or south
Speaker 1: pole direction, and then you you've got thousands of these, right,
Speaker 1: and in one strip you can encode information that way,
Speaker 1: and that information is going to have things like the
Speaker 1: the account number on it, so that it has you know,
Speaker 1: it's able to say this card belongs to this account. Uh.
Speaker 1: It may also have the pen on their the personal
Speaker 1: identification number, so that you can have that as sort
Speaker 1: of a key pass intrigue. You know, as long as
Speaker 1: the pen that you enter into the A t M
Speaker 1: matches the one that's on the card and in the account,
Speaker 1: as long as all three of those are are the same,
Speaker 1: then you'll be able to access your information. So that's
Speaker 1: on your card, which means of course that the a
Speaker 1: t M has to have some sort of card reader involved,
Speaker 1: which you know it's a magnetic stripe reader that you know.
Speaker 1: Depending on the style of the A t M, it
Speaker 1: maybe one where you put your card in and it
Speaker 1: sucks it into the machine and you hope when your
Speaker 1: transactions over it will spit it back out again. Or
Speaker 1: what I see most commonly now are the kinds where
Speaker 1: you swipe it. You either have a vertical swipe where
Speaker 1: you just swipe the card down the side of a
Speaker 1: little reader or you inserted into a slot and pull
Speaker 1: it back out again quickly, and in either case, the
Speaker 1: what happens is those little magnets go past a detector.
Speaker 1: Because the magnets are in motion, the detector detects the
Speaker 1: difference of the magnetism on each of those little bars
Speaker 1: and can read that as whatever the information is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So all the information that's printed on the card, um
Speaker 1: the number that's embossed in the card in your name,
Speaker 1: the machine is not reading or looking at any of
Speaker 1: that stuff. It's taking everything from the magnetic stripe. Which
Speaker 1: is why you should not put your your credit cards
Speaker 1: or a T M S cards or anything like that
Speaker 1: near powerful magnets, right, because that could actually realign those
Speaker 1: little magnetic particles inside the film. And some people call
Speaker 1: it de magnetizing, but really it's just realigning those polls
Speaker 1: so it no longer it might spout out gibberish now
Speaker 1: when you when you swipe it or anyway, it's not
Speaker 1: going to correspond with your information and suddenly your card
Speaker 1: doesn't work anymore. Yeah, you can also find the same
Speaker 1: thing if you've used it too much, if the magnetic
Speaker 1: stripe gets damaged in some way. Um. You know some
Speaker 1: people say that eel skin wallets. Yeah, I hear that
Speaker 1: a lot, because you know, and there are a lot
Speaker 1: of different theories about Actually, the theory I've heard that
Speaker 1: seems to explain it the most, or it seems to
Speaker 1: be the most logical to me. Eel skin wallets some
Speaker 1: people claim came from electric eels and that somehow has
Speaker 1: some sort of electric impulse still stored in it, and
Speaker 1: that's what's screwing up the cards. Count me skeptical on
Speaker 1: that one, exactly. But a lot of these have a
Speaker 1: magnetic clasp so that when you close it, it remains closed.
Speaker 1: And the magnetic clasp depending on how your card is,
Speaker 1: how you're storing your card in the wallet, Uh, the
Speaker 1: stripe might be close enough to the magnetic class that
Speaker 1: the magnetic class is is realigning those magnetic particles in
Speaker 1: the film, So don't do that. Well yeah, so once that, uh,
Speaker 1: you're you have the magnetic card reader. We've talked about
Speaker 1: that and and basically the information is going into a computer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very basic cpu inside every a t M and in
Speaker 1: fact a lot of them run windows, yeah, which we'll
Speaker 1: get to. The earlier A t M s were all proprietary.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Now that was when if you had an
Speaker 1: account with UM Bank something, you know, First National Bank,
Speaker 1: and you wanted to go to Second National Bank, you
Speaker 1: were on your own. You have to find an a
Speaker 1: t M for with First National Bank or you are
Speaker 1: out of luck because your card wouldn't work the system
Speaker 1: wasn't compatible. However, it also meant that those A t
Speaker 1: M s had the benefit of security through obscurity. That's
Speaker 1: true because UH would be thief would have to focus
Speaker 1: on a particular type of a t M and the
Speaker 1: things that might work on that a t M would
Speaker 1: not necessarily work on a t M s for other banks,
Speaker 1: So it's somewhat limited the liability and the vulnerability of
Speaker 1: those machines. Once the machine started to move toward more
Speaker 1: computer based operating systems like Lennox and Windows, then you
Speaker 1: opened up new opportunities for thieves to target specific parts
Speaker 1: of the A t M infrastructure and UH and made
Speaker 1: it in some ways more vulnerable than the older models.
Speaker 1: Now I say that, but the truth is you can
Speaker 1: actually find these older model a t M s on
Speaker 1: plenty of sites like eBay, where you could buy an
Speaker 1: a t M if you wanted to, and if your
Speaker 1: goal was to deconstruct to hack this a t M
Speaker 1: so you would learn how it works, you could potentially
Speaker 1: find vulnerabilities in that system to exploit. Don't do that,
Speaker 1: it's illegal. You don't want to do that. But there
Speaker 1: that That is one of the downsides to the old
Speaker 1: systems too, is that, you know, it's not like these
Speaker 1: things were. It's not like you had to have a
Speaker 1: license to own one. You know, you just had to
Speaker 1: buy one. So you just had to find someone willing
Speaker 1: to sell one and then you could buy it. So,
Speaker 1: but yes, you've got your CPU in there. Uh. However,
Speaker 1: the a t M is not its own standalone UM machine.
Speaker 1: Like it's not that it's it's disconnected from the outside world. No,
Speaker 1: but if you if you think about it, it's it's
Speaker 1: very much like the computer that sits on your desktop
Speaker 1: or laptop. So you've got a screen for customer uh
Speaker 1: for basically an output device. You've got a printer that
Speaker 1: prints out. You've got an input device or maybe two.
Speaker 1: You might have a touch screen. You might have a
Speaker 1: key pad uh to type in members or both UM
Speaker 1: and hopefully both for those of people who have vision impairments,
Speaker 1: right right. And then you also have uh, basically an
Speaker 1: internet connection. It may be on a private network, it
Speaker 1: might be some kind yeah, very it might be a
Speaker 1: closed off, private connection, but it goes to a whatever
Speaker 1: bank is behind that particular a t M. Yeah, it'll
Speaker 1: have a network connection of some type to communicate with
Speaker 1: a a server somewhere that has account information on it.
Speaker 1: So if you have three in your account you want
Speaker 1: to withdraw twenty dollars, it will say, okay, well Jonathan's
Speaker 1: got three, so I can give him twenty dollars and
Speaker 1: he's withdrawn twenty dollars. So it makes a note of
Speaker 1: that in the account, so it says, now he has
Speaker 1: two left. Yeah. The way this works is that so
Speaker 1: you can think of the especially the older a t
Speaker 1: M s Um, we're really thin clients. Yeah they were,
Speaker 1: they were. You know. The the had essentially enough power
Speaker 1: for it to read the strip to uh uh to two,
Speaker 1: allow you to input your pen and to display the information.
Speaker 1: But then what it would do is the terminal that
Speaker 1: you're using would connect to a host processor. Now this
Speaker 1: would be a computer that belongs to whatever financial institution
Speaker 1: again is owns that a t M. Now, if that's
Speaker 1: your bank, then that's a much where this ends. It goes.
Speaker 1: It refers to your account. Make it confirms that you
Speaker 1: that you are who you say you are and that
Speaker 1: at least according to your pen and that you have
Speaker 1: the funds that you require in order for you to
Speaker 1: get whatever it is you're asking. So again like in
Speaker 1: your example, that that you have at least twenty dollars
Speaker 1: you can withdraw um and then it will send the
Speaker 1: information back to the machine that you're at and either
Speaker 1: confirmed that it can dispense the cash or deny it,
Speaker 1: and then the machine does whatever it's supposed to do. Uh.
Speaker 1: If your bank is a different bank, then what happens
Speaker 1: is the it will go to the host processor. The
Speaker 1: host processor will then route that request to the specific
Speaker 1: financial institution that you belong to and get the permission there,
Speaker 1: and then your bank essentially will wirelessly transfer funds to
Speaker 1: the financial institution and charge of that a t M.
Speaker 1: And then that financial institution will allow the a t
Speaker 1: M to dispense cash because the money has been you know,
Speaker 1: it's not losing money, it's had the wireless transfer from
Speaker 1: your bank. This is also why you'll find a lot
Speaker 1: of a t M s have those fees on them, yes,
Speaker 1: the usage fees, because otherwise, you know, it's just an
Speaker 1: access thing that you know, banks are doing out of
Speaker 1: the goodness of their hearts. But these are bankers. We
Speaker 1: know they don't have that, right bankers and lawyers right,
Speaker 1: so um hey, I wrote, I watched the documentary at Christmas, Caroll,
Speaker 1: I know how this works. So so in order to
Speaker 1: make money off of these transactions, that's why you have
Speaker 1: that usage fee, because you know it's going to charge
Speaker 1: you for the whole process of having the money transferred
Speaker 1: from your financial institution to the bank, and depending upon
Speaker 1: the way that the different financial institutions operate, you might
Speaker 1: actually have multiple fees on one transaction, which is really irritating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's when you get the fee from the second national
Speaker 1: bank from using it's a t M, and then the
Speaker 1: fee from the first national bank for wirelessly transferring the
Speaker 1: money to second national bank. You should have used our
Speaker 1: a t M. Yeah, that's uh, that's terrible. However, one
Speaker 1: of the bright sides of using a t M S
Speaker 1: is that if you're in a foreign country and you're
Speaker 1: using your card, it's automatically making the change exchange, and
Speaker 1: it usually makes that exchange at a like you know, normally,
Speaker 1: if you go into a financial institution to exchange currency
Speaker 1: from one format to another, there's a fee placed on
Speaker 1: top of that. So yes, so you're not going to
Speaker 1: get a a perfect exchange from whatever currency you're using
Speaker 1: to whatever you need. You're gonna have some of that
Speaker 1: money taken out. But usually if you're using an A
Speaker 1: t M in a foreign country, you you tend to
Speaker 1: get one of the You normally get a really favorable rate.
Speaker 1: You know, it won't be as dramatic as it would
Speaker 1: be if you were to go into some money changing
Speaker 1: place anyway, getting off topic here, So, uh, that's the
Speaker 1: process going on behind the scenes. Now, when the money
Speaker 1: is actually coming out, how does the A t M
Speaker 1: know that it's giving you the right amount of money? Well,
Speaker 1: it has to. Basically, it has cassettes in there with
Speaker 1: the different bills. So assuming that things are lined up correctly,
Speaker 1: assuming that the person who's loaded the A t M
Speaker 1: has done so in the proper way, then it should
Speaker 1: be dispensing the right number of bills. Now, it also
Speaker 1: goes by thickness, so it should be able to tell
Speaker 1: um if you are getting say two bills out, let's
Speaker 1: say two twenties you want um, then it should be
Speaker 1: able to go, okay, there are two, because I can
Speaker 1: tell by the thickness of these bills. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got you've got a couple of different types of
Speaker 1: sensors inside the A t M. There's usually an electrical
Speaker 1: eye sensor, some sort of optical sensor that is optically
Speaker 1: verifying that the the denominations that are being dispensed match
Speaker 1: what you asked for. Yes. And then there's also the
Speaker 1: thickness sensor, so that if uh, if it's supposed to
Speaker 1: be doing it one bill at a time, and the
Speaker 1: thickness sensor says, wait a minute, that's too thick for
Speaker 1: it to be one bill, it will send that particular bill,
Speaker 1: or a pair of bills, or whatever it happens to
Speaker 1: be to a reject been inside the A t M.
Speaker 1: So the A t M has has a bend that
Speaker 1: collects rejects, and this can also be bills that are
Speaker 1: worn or torn. If if it detects that, then it's
Speaker 1: gonna send it to the reject ben. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: the ben is just gonna keep collecting bills that get
Speaker 1: rejected through this process. And it's all taking just a
Speaker 1: few seconds. So you know, you might be waiting a
Speaker 1: little bit but thinking like whatever, what. Meanwhile, the machine
Speaker 1: is making sure that it's dispensing the right number and
Speaker 1: denomination of bills to you. Um. There's also an electronic
Speaker 1: journal that's part of an a t M, so that
Speaker 1: it's recording every transaction that's happening with that machine, and
Speaker 1: it also records whenever any bill gets sent to the
Speaker 1: reject ben And that way, when someone comes into service
Speaker 1: the machine, either to refill it or to fix it
Speaker 1: or whatever, they can take a look at the journal
Speaker 1: and see, uh, you know, how frequently are is the
Speaker 1: reject been getting a bill sent to it, and it's
Speaker 1: happening a lot. That might mean that either the sensors
Speaker 1: need to be adjusted, or that the feeding mechanism needs
Speaker 1: to be adjusted so that it's no longer pulling more
Speaker 1: than one bill at a time, Or it might mean
Speaker 1: that the actual bills that are being put into the
Speaker 1: machine are of to they're not they're not fresh enough
Speaker 1: that you know that something needs to change. This one's
Speaker 1: a little stale, Yeah, exactly, because too many of them
Speaker 1: are going into the reject been. So so it's got
Speaker 1: built built in error correction if you will. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: and and some of that again is mechanical, and some
Speaker 1: of it's just saying, hey, stop putting crappy money in
Speaker 1: me because I can't give it to anyone, and the
Speaker 1: bank's like, but we don't want to give money to anyone, Yes,
Speaker 1: And then they twirl their mustaches and leap into a
Speaker 1: giant vault full of gold coins, which, by the way hurts.
Speaker 1: I don't know how Scrooge McDuck did it, no, man,
Speaker 1: I I scratched that one off my bucket list, and
Speaker 1: then I also broke an arm, so not. I do
Speaker 1: not recommend it. However, if you invest tuppens anyway, um
Speaker 1: so yeah, that birds um so yeah. I mean it
Speaker 1: is basically, um a computer with a couple's special sophisticated
Speaker 1: UM ways to handle error correction. Oh and I also
Speaker 1: wanted to mention that the journal. The journal sort of
Speaker 1: serves two purposes. One, it helps keep track of what's
Speaker 1: going on with a machine, so that can you you
Speaker 1: could see the machines working correctly. Also provides an accounting
Speaker 1: uh in case there's ever any dispute about what the
Speaker 1: machine was dispensing or whether there was a question about
Speaker 1: um how the machine was used. Out of course, now
Speaker 1: um A t m s also usually have some kind
Speaker 1: of security camera um nearby to watch that people are
Speaker 1: who they say they are. Yeah, so you can match
Speaker 1: up the time on the security camera with the time
Speaker 1: that was listed in the journal and go back and
Speaker 1: review footage. Uh if someone has if any of you
Speaker 1: out there have ever had your card number and and
Speaker 1: penn stolen so that someone else has accessed your account
Speaker 1: through an a t M, you realize, of course this
Speaker 1: would be a really important feature. I'm one of those people,
Speaker 1: by the way. Yeah, well that's actually that was but
Speaker 1: my bank was very good at letting me know and
Speaker 1: was very proactive in making sure that that got fixed.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, now that's that's true. These uh, these
Speaker 1: machines are sophisticated and and specialized, but they're also uh
Speaker 1: in some ways not so sophisticated that they can't be
Speaker 1: fooled or not not necessarily fooled. But um also that
Speaker 1: other people can come along and take information by using
Speaker 1: devices such as skimmers, which can me put over the
Speaker 1: card reader UM. And basically it is usually a very slim,
Speaker 1: uh compact device that can read the magnetic strip on
Speaker 1: there on the card. So basically what happens is if
Speaker 1: if a scammer has installed a skimmer on an A
Speaker 1: t M. When you put your card through it, both
Speaker 1: the skimmer and the A t M are reading the
Speaker 1: card number. Now the pin block the UM. In the
Speaker 1: United States, federal regulations require that the pin block, which
Speaker 1: is the four digit pin uh information UM, must be
Speaker 1: encrypted when it's sent along. So UH to some degree,
Speaker 1: you would be protected if just your number was going
Speaker 1: through the skimmer, because you would need the pin block
Speaker 1: UH encrypted, you know, and it's encrypted on the card,
Speaker 1: so it can't UH the machine has to decipher that.
Speaker 1: The skimmer can't do that. So what the scammers do.
Speaker 1: They will they will install a very tiny camera. You know,
Speaker 1: cameras are teeny tiny these days. You know, we've got
Speaker 1: him in our smartphone owns and other types of phones. UM,
Speaker 1: they're sitting on top of our laptops and and and
Speaker 1: computers because they're so small. UM, people can in smaller,
Speaker 1: in small, install a small camera right above the area
Speaker 1: where the you type in your number, and then they'll
Speaker 1: they'll record your keypad punches. And then what they'll do
Speaker 1: is they'll match the keypad punch to the information that
Speaker 1: they've skimmed off your card, and then they've got essentially
Speaker 1: your card number and your pen all in one place
Speaker 1: and can then access money from your account at any
Speaker 1: a t M. And a lot of cases too, they
Speaker 1: don't try to take as much as they can get.
Speaker 1: A lot of cases, UM, banks that I know of
Speaker 1: here in the United States will give you a maximum
Speaker 1: amount of day, usually something like three dollars per day UM.
Speaker 1: A lot of times these scammers won't do that. They'll
Speaker 1: take out twenty dollars, and the idea being that be
Speaker 1: harder to detect. Yeah, well I must have. I must
Speaker 1: have taken out I don't remember what I what that was,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't that much. It wasn't like somebody was
Speaker 1: scanning me. Although if you do, if you're which this,
Speaker 1: by the way, is why it's important for you to
Speaker 1: review your your bank statements on a regular basis, uh,
Speaker 1: because you may notice that you're withdrawing money from places
Speaker 1: that you are not physically at, like Los Angeles or
Speaker 1: something when you're not in l A. If you're in
Speaker 1: l A and you see that you with drawn from
Speaker 1: l A, you may very well have been the person
Speaker 1: who have done that. I don't mean to say that
Speaker 1: any withdrawal from l A is obviously fraudulent, right people
Speaker 1: who people everything's on it? Does this mean I have
Speaker 1: to drive to San Jose if I want to withdraw money? Yes,
Speaker 1: that is what I meant. Um. There are some some
Speaker 1: people working on newer types of verification technology. I saw
Speaker 1: one they're trying out in Poland, which is using biometrics.
Speaker 1: They do a scan of your finger and they don't
Speaker 1: use your fingerprint. They're looking at the veins in your
Speaker 1: finger which is pretty smart because again fingerprints, you can
Speaker 1: lift a fingerprint and you can fake fingerprint readers. It.
Speaker 1: The more sophisticated the detection device, the less likely someone's
Speaker 1: going to go through all the trouble to um to
Speaker 1: fool it, because it is a lot of I mean,
Speaker 1: it takes a lot of investment just to get the
Speaker 1: stuff too to be able to fool these devices. But yeah,
Speaker 1: if you wanna, fingerprint is not full proof because you
Speaker 1: could lift a print off of something and then create
Speaker 1: a latex print, uh and fool some machines using that.
Speaker 1: We've seen that happen before. Um. There's also I know
Speaker 1: you mentioned the cameras, but we should also mention some
Speaker 1: uh some skimmers will also use a fake keypad, which
Speaker 1: which is essentially a key logger that's logging up pen entries.
Speaker 1: So if you ever walk up to an A t
Speaker 1: M and and it looks like parts of the machine
Speaker 1: don't match up exactly like the it's just a different
Speaker 1: coloration or made out of a different material, and it
Speaker 1: just looks a little odd, that's a warning sign. Doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean that a skimmer has hit that machine. It
Speaker 1: may just be that that particular machine was manufactured in
Speaker 1: an odd way. But anything that looks a little out
Speaker 1: of place should be a big red flag to you.
Speaker 1: And UH, and I would highly recommend that if you
Speaker 1: do notice something when you walk up to an A
Speaker 1: t M, uh that's like that that you find a
Speaker 1: different one, don't use that one. Yeah, And and keep
Speaker 1: in mind where it is to the more isolated A
Speaker 1: t M s are more likely to be the ones
Speaker 1: that UH scammers are going to target because they will
Speaker 1: be easier to modify. UM, because this stuff takes a
Speaker 1: little bit of time and effort, and if you're doing
Speaker 1: it in a high traffic area, someone's gonna notice. Yeah. Like,
Speaker 1: for example, the the A t M s that you
Speaker 1: might see in a popular gas station, UM are a
Speaker 1: whole lot likely, a whole lot more likely to be okay,
Speaker 1: because if a cashier is standing right across from it
Speaker 1: all day long, it's unlikely that a scammer is going
Speaker 1: to have the the time to install those devices without
Speaker 1: getting caught doing what are you doing? Or something like
Speaker 1: a busy airport where there's a lot of security already there.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just it's such a it would be
Speaker 1: such a high risk endeavor that it would you know,
Speaker 1: you look at risk versus reward from a thief standpoint,
Speaker 1: would be less likely to be hit. That's not saying
Speaker 1: that some enterprising thief hasn't tried it, but but it's
Speaker 1: less likely. Yeah. Well, in fact, we've had a we
Speaker 1: had a rash here in the Atlanta area not terribly
Speaker 1: long ago where people were knocking over a t M
Speaker 1: s with their cars and just taking the a forklifts
Speaker 1: or bulldozers. Yeah, yeah, basically because it's easier to crow
Speaker 1: bar your way into one than bother trying to Because
Speaker 1: we didn't mention the code part of the a t
Speaker 1: M is it's a safe. Yeah, you know, it's there's
Speaker 1: a safe that's inside these machines. That's where all the
Speaker 1: money is kept in a vault in a safe in
Speaker 1: the machine. So if you were to take the whole machine,
Speaker 1: you're taking the vault. Now before before any of you say, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go on a life of crime and
Speaker 1: start knocking over a t M machines, a t M
Speaker 1: S I knew, I told you at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the show that it was gonna happen. I caught myself
Speaker 1: that I told you it was gonna happen. Um, A
Speaker 1: lot of these have things inside the vault that if
Speaker 1: if stuff goes wrong, it will ruin the money inside there.
Speaker 1: Essentially a little little explosive charges. Usually some of them
Speaker 1: have um explosive charges full of gas, so that if
Speaker 1: if a thief is trying to use a gas explosion
Speaker 1: to uh to open the vault, that it actually has
Speaker 1: gas that counteracts the explosive gas, rendering in a inert
Speaker 1: so and that in that case it's not necessarily destroying
Speaker 1: the money inside, it's just trying to destroy the the
Speaker 1: methodology that the thief is using to get the vault open.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's some other tech involved here that's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. UM. Now I use a t M S.
Speaker 1: I mean I I try to be careful about and
Speaker 1: I try to keep a good eye on making sure
Speaker 1: that whatever device I'm using looks you know, totally legit
Speaker 1: and everything. Uh it's it's us. So I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that a t M s are so dangerous that no
Speaker 1: one should use them, but it does bear repeating that
Speaker 1: you should be vigilant and pay attention when you come
Speaker 1: up to an a t M. Don't just you know,
Speaker 1: walk up and ignore all uh all safety, especially you know,
Speaker 1: not just the machine itself. But you know, it's always
Speaker 1: good to take a quick look around you to make
Speaker 1: sure you're not going to be mugged. I've never been mugged.
Speaker 1: I don't want it to happen. I'm gonna try and
Speaker 1: keep that street going. But yeah, that's that's one of
Speaker 1: those things is that, you know, banks often would tell
Speaker 1: customers to you know, certain follow certain safety guidelines and
Speaker 1: be alert when you're using those machines, and you know,
Speaker 1: make sure you have your card ready before you go
Speaker 1: up to one and uh and and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: don't don't linger, don't count your money as your until
Speaker 1: the dealing is done, I guess, but don't catch your
Speaker 1: money right there at the machine. You know, don't give
Speaker 1: thieves the opportunity to pounce on you in that in
Speaker 1: those cases. Now, of course, if you're in a nice,
Speaker 1: busy street and there's a lot of people around, you're
Speaker 1: probably in better shape than uh, you know. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about in the middle of the night, after you've gone
Speaker 1: clubbing all night long and you need that cash because
Speaker 1: you're about to go to that all night pancake house
Speaker 1: that only accepts cash. Just bear in mind your surroundings
Speaker 1: in the situation and be careful. Yes, Also, it never
Speaker 1: hurts to try to cover your hand when you're typing
Speaker 1: in your pin, because even if you don't see the
Speaker 1: little camera, it is possible that it may be one
Speaker 1: somewhere around. But it's just a good habit to get into.
Speaker 1: It makes it really hard to type in your pin correctly.
Speaker 1: I've found plus you just gotta use one like I do.
Speaker 1: Zero zero zero zero. It just goes right through one, two,
Speaker 1: three four using my luggage. Yeah, the there there is
Speaker 1: one exception. I mean, with all the the thousands of
Speaker 1: these machines that are there are everywhere in the world, um,
Speaker 1: and it is likely that the more remote machines are
Speaker 1: the ones that would be targeted by scammers. However, if
Speaker 1: you find yourself at the McMurdo station in Antarctica and
Speaker 1: use the A t M there, it's probably not been hacked,
Speaker 1: but I can't guarantee that it only dispenses frozen herring. No,
Speaker 1: there actually is an A t M at McMurdo station
Speaker 1: in an Antarctica. I don't know why, but I saw
Speaker 1: it mentioned in several of the articles I was using
Speaker 1: for research. I guess just because it's so weird that
Speaker 1: there would be one there. You kind of wonder what
Speaker 1: you need cash for in Antarctica. So so you want
Speaker 1: to report fraud? Yes, so what what? What did he
Speaker 1: look like? Well, he was wearing a tuxedo. He's about
Speaker 1: two ft tall, about two ft tall, and imagine most
Speaker 1: of the people on most of the people on this
Speaker 1: block of eyes. All right, Well, on that note, we're
Speaker 1: going to a not a bank note either. We're gonna
Speaker 1: wrap this up. So, guys, if you have any questions
Speaker 1: about types of technology you want to know more about,
Speaker 1: or maybe a company or a person in technology you
Speaker 1: want to know more about, send us an email our
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Speaker 1: drop us a line on Twitter or Facebook are handled,
Speaker 1: There is tech stuff hs W and Chris and I
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