Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text Stuff from Stuff stat.
Speaker 1: Hey there, guys, it's Jonathan. This is Tech Stuff. It's
Speaker 1: time for another classic episode. Yes, indeed, we are still
Speaker 1: getting everything ready to go with our new studio. I'm
Speaker 1: recording this in our old studio, so I'm just guessing
Speaker 1: that that's true. At any rate, I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about a classic episode text Stuff withdraws from the a
Speaker 1: t M. This one has my old buddy Chris Pallette
Speaker 1: as the co host in this episode, and we talk
Speaker 1: all about what a t M S are and I
Speaker 1: think I say a t M machine and pen number
Speaker 1: about a billion time. Enjoy. I'm talking about a t
Speaker 1: M S today. And we've had a few people ask
Speaker 1: us about how a t M S work. We assume
Speaker 1: it was all on the up and up, not to
Speaker 1: find out how they work so that you can exploit them.
Speaker 1: I did find out an article about how to hack
Speaker 1: into one. Wow. Well, and that gets a little complicated.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that. Why that is in the case, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it really does depend. But first let's talk about
Speaker 1: how a t M S came to be. That's somewhat
Speaker 1: in dispute. Yes, um, there there are multiple people who
Speaker 1: were inventing things that resemble what a t M s
Speaker 1: are today in different parts of the world around the
Speaker 1: same time, although the earliest one I could find was
Speaker 1: from a Mr. Luther sim Jean Yes who was born
Speaker 1: in Turkey. It was the son of Armenians who were
Speaker 1: sadly his family was was broken up during a genocide
Speaker 1: in the early twentieth century, and he uh. He eventually
Speaker 1: immigrated to the United States and he came up with
Speaker 1: an idea that eventually he called the bank matic Automated
Speaker 1: Teller machine. So that's where we get t M that's
Speaker 1: he's the one who came up with the term. And
Speaker 1: this was around nineteen nine. But this was doesn't really
Speaker 1: resemble the way a t M s look and and
Speaker 1: act now. But it was an idea of a of
Speaker 1: an machine that would dispense money. And it was run
Speaker 1: for a six month trial at the City Bank of
Speaker 1: New York, which we now call City Bank. Yes uh.
Speaker 1: And after the six months the trial ended and City
Speaker 1: Bank decided not to extend the trial, not to implement it,
Speaker 1: and um, at least according to one source I read,
Speaker 1: the reason behind it was that it just didn't get
Speaker 1: a lot of traction. The people people just didn't want
Speaker 1: to use a machine to interact with their bank accounts.
Speaker 1: They preferred to have a person to person interaction in
Speaker 1: a bank. And apparently the people who were using it
Speaker 1: were a bunch of air dwells. Yeah, I read about
Speaker 1: that too. Basically, they they the idea of being that
Speaker 1: the only people who would not want to talk to
Speaker 1: a teller are the people who would prefer that you
Speaker 1: didn't know they were depositing or withdrawing money in the
Speaker 1: first place. Yea, so we're talking about people with ill
Speaker 1: gotten game gamblers, for example, places where gambling was not legal,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, you might not want to have
Speaker 1: to answer tricky questions like how did you come upon
Speaker 1: this sum 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: will look down upon UM. But some of them use
Speaker 1: special vouchers or coins, yes, and a token. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: in Britain you had to UH on one of the
Speaker 1: early trials, you had to go inside and get a voucher.
Speaker 1: You would get a ten pound voucher. So if you
Speaker 1: wanted fifty pounds, you have to get five vouchers. That
Speaker 1: would you take outside of the machine, which raises the
Speaker 1: question why would you not just go and withdraw the
Speaker 1: money directly while you're there, unless, of course, you just
Speaker 1: wanted the convenience of being able to get at ten
Speaker 1: pounds at any given time in the future. And I
Speaker 1: guess that's the argument you'd have to make, Like, instead
Speaker 1: of walking out the bank with fifty pounds, which you
Speaker 1: know you may or may not need at that time,
Speaker 1: you could have uh five ten pound vouchers, and then
Speaker 1: as the as you go about your business throughout the
Speaker 1: coming days, you realize, oh, I need some more walking
Speaker 1: around money or getting about money, as I like to say,
Speaker 1: you would go and use one of those vouchers to
Speaker 1: get some more money out, but it did seem to
Speaker 1: decrease the convenience factor of the automated teller machine somewhat.
Speaker 1: But yeah, in this case, you wouldn't need a card
Speaker 1: with stuff and coded on it. You would just need
Speaker 1: your voucher to put in and then it would spit
Speaker 1: money out. It became like a money vending machine. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And uh in n in Britain there was a several
Speaker 1: banks used a 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 in 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 this mainly the real development of a t M
Speaker 1: S yawned. The early ninety nine example took place in
Speaker 1: the sixties, so you had people like James Goodfellow who
Speaker 1: he secured a patent on an A t M like
Speaker 1: machine in nineteen sixty six. He also came up with
Speaker 1: the idea of storing a personal identification number on a
Speaker 1: magnetic strip that would be printed on the back of
Speaker 1: a card, so that would become the A t M
Speaker 1: card eventually. Uh. They had 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 machine. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then there's John Shepherd Baron, who I think I think
Speaker 1: most sources I saw credited him as the true father
Speaker 1: of the a t M. Yeah, John Shepherd Baron, because
Speaker 1: he was the guy who created the first real fully
Speaker 1: electronic automated teller machine and uh, and the very first
Speaker 1: one wasn't stalled in Barclays Bank in London in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven. But you also had Don Wetzel. Now he
Speaker 1: was working in America and his machines started coming out
Speaker 1: around nineteen sixty 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, Sora used as a launching
Speaker 1: point for his own work. So you get a lot
Speaker 1: of conflicting information about who is really the inventor of
Speaker 1: the A t M. I think part of it depends
Speaker 1: on where you're from. If you're from England, then it's
Speaker 1: John Shepherd Baron, Yeah, and uh in UM, the National
Speaker 1: Museum of American History, the Smithsonian recognized wet cell Um
Speaker 1: and 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, yeah,
Speaker 1: or radio. Yeah, they're like many other inventions. There's uh
Speaker 1: the story. The real story is far more complicated than
Speaker 1: just a factoid that you'll find in a history book. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say. Now, even though in the sixties,
Speaker 1: UM A t m s became a lot more common,
Speaker 1: banks 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: in withdrawals or transfers or whatever without having to go
Speaker 1: into the bank. Because of course, the reason why people
Speaker 1: were coming up with this in the first place was
Speaker 1: 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 of your work day in
Speaker 1: order to you know, and then you have to go
Speaker 1: inside a bank and stand in line. See for some
Speaker 1: of our listeners, this is going to sound completely foreign
Speaker 1: to them because apart from maybe opening up a bank
Speaker 1: account or perhaps going in for a loan or something
Speaker 1: 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. Yea. 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: pysical 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 you do all that
Speaker 1: 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. Anyway, in January in New
Speaker 1: York they got seventeen inches of snow, which slowed business
Speaker 1: to a crawl because a lot of places couldn't open.
Speaker 1: And they said, um, again this is citing the Fortune article. Um.
Speaker 1: There was a commercial that City Bank released saying, um,
Speaker 1: you know, hey, you can use these machines anytime, whether
Speaker 1: the bank's open or not. Uh. And they had a
Speaker 1: new tagline, the City Never sleeps um, and it said, um,
Speaker 1: see what they did there. The machines used increased during
Speaker 1: the storm, and uh. City banks market share in New
Speaker 1: York City deposits had doubled, and so the rest of
Speaker 1: the banks moved to catch up, and that basically started
Speaker 1: to evolution, at least in New York. Um. Of course
Speaker 1: that's a lot of people, so that that can affect things.
Speaker 1: And people go in there and see how people are
Speaker 1: using the A t M s and they go back home,
Speaker 1: you know yep. Yeah, And like I said, in the eighties,
Speaker 1: that really started to take off. So I guess now
Speaker 1: we can finally start getting into what makes up an
Speaker 1: A t M and how they how they actually work. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: part of this involves the way that we access the
Speaker 1: A t M s uh. And and not just with
Speaker 1: the key the keypad or the touch screen, depending upon
Speaker 1: the model that you're using, but the card you have,
Speaker 1: your A t M card, whatever you're using to access
Speaker 1: the A t M. And there are variations on this,
Speaker 1: but all of them have a magnetic stripe or mag
Speaker 1: stripe on them. And uh, you might say, well, what
Speaker 1: the heck is a magnetic stripe? Well, it's kind of
Speaker 1: what sounds like it's a uh, it's it's a plastic
Speaker 1: like film. It's on the back of your card that
Speaker 1: has lots and lots and lots of tiny iron based
Speaker 1: magnetic particles. Yes, as a matter of fact, it's very similar,
Speaker 1: if not nearly identical to the material that they used
Speaker 1: to use in recording tape cassette tape cassette tapes, real
Speaker 1: to real tapes, eight track tapes, also floppy disks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the material inside there, I mean, that's even most of
Speaker 1: them are even the same brownish color. Right. And the
Speaker 1: way you right to this strip is that you you
Speaker 1: magnetize these little particles. Each of the particles acts like
Speaker 1: its own bar magnet, right, and you magnetize them to
Speaker 1: either have a north or south pole direction on each particle,
Speaker 1: and so that's like bits, zeros and ones. So by
Speaker 1: creating them in either a north or south pole direction,
Speaker 1: and then you you've got thousands of these, right, and
Speaker 1: in one strip. You can in code 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 pin on their the personal
Speaker 1: identification number, so that you can have that as sort
Speaker 1: of a key pass entrigue. 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, and the detector detects
Speaker 1: the difference of the magnetism on each of those little
Speaker 1: bars 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. Some people call it
Speaker 1: de magnetizing, but really it's just realigning those polls so
Speaker 1: it no longer it might spout out gibberish. Now when
Speaker 1: you when you swipe it or anyway it's not going
Speaker 1: to correspond with your information and suddenly your card doesn't
Speaker 1: work anymore. Yeah, you can also find the same thing
Speaker 1: if you've used it too much or if the magnetic
Speaker 1: stripe gets damaged in some way. Um. You know, some
Speaker 1: people say the 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 it somehow
Speaker 1: has some sort of electric impulse still stored in it
Speaker 1: and that's what's screwing up the cards. Count me skeptical
Speaker 1: on that one exactly. But a lot of these have
Speaker 1: a magnetic clasp so that when you close it, it
Speaker 1: remains closed. And the magnetic clasp depending on how your
Speaker 1: card is, how you're storing your card in the wallet. Uh,
Speaker 1: the stripe might be close enough to the magnetic class
Speaker 1: that the magnetic class is is realigning those magnetic particles
Speaker 1: in the film, So don't do that. Well. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: once that, uh, you're you have the magnetic card reader.
Speaker 1: We've talked about that and and basically the information is
Speaker 1: going into a computer. Yeah, very basic CPU inside every
Speaker 1: a t M and in fact a lot of them
Speaker 1: run Windows. Yeah, which we'll get to. The earlier A
Speaker 1: t M s were all proprietary. Oh yeah, Now that
Speaker 1: was when if you had an account with UM Bank something,
Speaker 1: you know, First National Bank, and you wanted to go
Speaker 1: to Second National Bank, you were on your own. You
Speaker 1: have to find an a t M for with First
Speaker 1: National Bank or you are out of luck because your
Speaker 1: card wouldn't work the system wasn't compatible. However, it also
Speaker 1: meant that those A t M s had the benefit
Speaker 1: of security through obscurity. That's true because would be thief
Speaker 1: would have to focus on a particular type of a
Speaker 1: t M, and the things that might work on the
Speaker 1: A t M would not necessarily work on a t
Speaker 1: M s for other banks, So it's somewhat limited the
Speaker 1: liability and the vulnerability of those machines. Once the machine
Speaker 1: started to move toward more computer based operating systems like
Speaker 1: Lenox and Windows, then you opened up new opportunities for
Speaker 1: thieves to target specific parts of the A t M
Speaker 1: infrastructure and uh, and made it in some ways more
Speaker 1: vulnerable than the older models. Now I say that, but
Speaker 1: the truth is you can actually find these older model
Speaker 1: A t M s on plenty of sites like eBay
Speaker 1: where you could buy an A t M if you
Speaker 1: wanted to, and if your goal was to deconstruct, to
Speaker 1: hack this a t M so you would learn how
Speaker 1: it works, you could potentially find vulnerabilities in that system
Speaker 1: to exploit. Don't do that, it's illegal. You don't want
Speaker 1: to do that, but there that That is one of
Speaker 1: the downsides to the old systems too, is that you know,
Speaker 1: it's not like these things or it's not like you
Speaker 1: had to have a license to own one. You know,
Speaker 1: you just had to buy one. So you just had
Speaker 1: to find someone willing to sell one and then you
Speaker 1: could buy it. So but yes, you've got your CPU
Speaker 1: in there. Uh. However, the A t M is not
Speaker 1: its own standalone UM machine. Like it's not that it's
Speaker 1: it's disconnected from the outside world. No, but if you
Speaker 1: if you think about it, it's it's very much like
Speaker 1: the computer that sits on your desktop or laptop. So
Speaker 1: you've got a screen for a customer, uh. For basically
Speaker 1: is an output device. You've got a printer that prints,
Speaker 1: you've got an input device or maybe two. You might
Speaker 1: have a touch screen, you might have a key pad
Speaker 1: to type in members or both, um and hopefully both
Speaker 1: for those of people who have vision impairments, right, right.
Speaker 1: And then you also have uh, basically an internet connection.
Speaker 1: It may be on a private network. It might be
Speaker 1: some kind yeah, very, it might be a closed private connection,
Speaker 1: but it goes to a whatever bank is behind that
Speaker 1: particular a t M. Yeah, it'll have a network connection
Speaker 1: of some type to communicate with a server somewhere that
Speaker 1: has account information on it. So if you have three
Speaker 1: in your account you want to withdraw twenty dollars, it
Speaker 1: will say, okay, well Jonathan's got three, so I can
Speaker 1: give him twenty dollars. And he's withdrawn twenty dollars, so
Speaker 1: it makes a note of that in the account, so
Speaker 1: it says, now he has two left. Yeah. The way
Speaker 1: this works is that so you could think of the
Speaker 1: especially the older a t M s Um, we're really
Speaker 1: thin clients. Yeah they were, they were. You know. The
Speaker 1: the it had essentially enough power for it to read
Speaker 1: the strip to uh uh two allow you to input
Speaker 1: your pen and to display the information. But then what
Speaker 1: it would do is the terminal that you're using would
Speaker 1: connect to a host processor. Now this would be a
Speaker 1: computer that belongs to whatever financial institution again is owns
Speaker 1: that a t M. Now, if that's your bank, then
Speaker 1: that's pretty much where this ends. It goes, it refers
Speaker 1: to your account. Make it confirms that you that you
Speaker 1: are who you say you are, and that at least
Speaker 1: according to your pen and that you have the funds
Speaker 1: that you require in order for you to get whatever
Speaker 1: it is you're asking. So again like in your example,
Speaker 1: that you have at least twenty dollars you can withdraw um.
Speaker 1: And then it will send the information back to the
Speaker 1: machine that you're at and either confirmed that it can
Speaker 1: dispense the cash or deny it, and then the machine
Speaker 1: does whatever it's supposed to do. Uh, if your bank
Speaker 1: is a different bank, then what happens is the it
Speaker 1: will go to the host processor. The host processor will
Speaker 1: then route that request to the specific financial institution that
Speaker 1: you belong to and get the permission there, and then
Speaker 1: your bank essentially will wirelessly trays for funds to the
Speaker 1: financial institution and charge of that a t M. And
Speaker 1: then that financial institution will allow the a t M
Speaker 1: 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 I watched the documentary Christmas Caroll.
Speaker 1: I know how this works. Uh so, So in order
Speaker 1: to make money off of these transactions, that's why you
Speaker 1: have that usage fee, because you know it's going to
Speaker 1: charge you for the whole process of having the money
Speaker 1: transferred from your financial institution to the bank. And depending
Speaker 1: upon the way that the different financial institution and operate,
Speaker 1: you might actually have multiple fees on one transaction, which
Speaker 1: is really irritating. Yeah, that's when you get the fee
Speaker 1: from the second national bank from using it's a t M,
Speaker 1: and then the fee from the first national bank for
Speaker 1: wirelessly transferring the money to second national bank. You should
Speaker 1: have used our a t M. Yeah, that's uh, that's terrible. However,
Speaker 1: one of the bright sides of using a t M
Speaker 1: S is that if you're in a foreign country and
Speaker 1: you're using your card, it's automatically making the change exchange,
Speaker 1: and 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 tend to get
Speaker 1: 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 um,
Speaker 1: if you are getting say two bills out, let's say
Speaker 1: two twenties you want, um, then it should be able
Speaker 1: to go, okay, there are two, because I can tell
Speaker 1: by the thickness of these bills. UM. So yeah, you've
Speaker 1: got You've got a couple of different types of sensors
Speaker 1: inside the A t M. There's usually an electrical eye sensor,
Speaker 1: some sort of optical sensor that is optically verifying that
Speaker 1: the the denominations that are being dispensed mat what you
Speaker 1: asked for. And then there's also the thickness sensor, so
Speaker 1: that if uh, if it's supposed to be doing it
Speaker 1: one bill at a time, and the thickness censor says,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, that's too thick for it to be
Speaker 1: one bill, it will send that particular bill or pair
Speaker 1: of bills, or whatever it happens to be to a
Speaker 1: reject been inside the A t M. So the A
Speaker 1: t M has has a bend that collects rejects, and
Speaker 1: this can also be bills that are worn or torn.
Speaker 1: If if it detects that, then's going to send it
Speaker 1: to the reject ben. Uh. And so the ben's just
Speaker 1: gonna keep collecting bills that get rejected through this process.
Speaker 1: And it's all taking just a few seconds, so you know,
Speaker 1: you might be waiting a little bit but thinking like whatever. What. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the machine is making sure that it's dispensing the right
Speaker 1: number and denomination of bills to you. Um. There's also
Speaker 1: an electronic journal that's part of an a t M,
Speaker 1: so that it's recording every transaction that's happening with that machine,
Speaker 1: and it also records whenever any bill gets sent to
Speaker 1: the reject ben. And that way, when someone comes into
Speaker 1: service the machine, either to refill it or to fix
Speaker 1: it or whatever, they can take a look at the
Speaker 1: journal and see, uh, you know, how frequently are is
Speaker 1: the reject been getting a bill sent to it and
Speaker 1: it's happening a lot. That might mean that either the
Speaker 1: sensors need to be adjusted, or that the feeding mechanism
Speaker 1: needs to be adjusted so that it's no longer pulling
Speaker 1: more than one bill at a time, or it might
Speaker 1: mean that the actual bills that are being put into
Speaker 1: the machine are of two. They're not they're not fresh
Speaker 1: enough that you know that something needs to change. This
Speaker 1: one's a little stale, Yeah, exactly, because too many of
Speaker 1: them are going into the reject ben So, so it's
Speaker 1: got built built in error correction if you will. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's and and some of that, again is mechanical, and
Speaker 1: some of it's just saying, hey, stop putting crappy money
Speaker 1: in me because I can't give it to anyone. And
Speaker 1: the bank's like, but we don't want to give money
Speaker 1: to anyone. Yes, And then they twirl their mustaches and
Speaker 1: leap into a giant vault full of gold coins, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, hurts. I don't know how Scrooge McDuck
Speaker 1: did it, No, man, I I scratched that one off
Speaker 1: my bucket list. And then I also broke an arm,
Speaker 1: so not. I do not recommend it. However, if you
Speaker 1: invest tuppens um so yeah, that birds um so Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it is basically UM a computer with a
Speaker 1: couple's special sophisticated UM ways to handle error correction. Oh
Speaker 1: and I also wanted to mention that the journal. The
Speaker 1: journal sort of serves two purposes. One, it helps keep
Speaker 1: track of what's going on with a machine so that
Speaker 1: you could see the machines working correctly. Also provides an
Speaker 1: accounting UH in case there's ever any dispute about what
Speaker 1: the machine was just bensing, or whether there was a
Speaker 1: question about UM how the machine was used. And of
Speaker 1: course now m A t M s also usually have
Speaker 1: some kind of security camera UM nearby to watch that
Speaker 1: people are who they say they are. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: can match up the the time on the security camera
Speaker 1: with the time that was listed in the journal and
Speaker 1: go back and review footage if someone has If any
Speaker 1: of you out there have ever had your card number
Speaker 1: and and penn stolen so that someone else has accessed
Speaker 1: your account through an a t M, you realize, of
Speaker 1: course this would be a really important feature. I'm one
Speaker 1: of those people, by the way. Yeah, that's actually that
Speaker 1: was But my bank was very good at letting me
Speaker 1: know and was very proactive in making sure that that
Speaker 1: got fixed. So yep, yep, now that's that's true. These uh,
Speaker 1: these machines are sophisticated and and specialized, but they're also
Speaker 1: uh in some ways not so sophisticated that they can't
Speaker 1: be fooled or not not necessarily fooled. But UM also
Speaker 1: that other people can come along and take information by
Speaker 1: using devices such as skimmers, which can be put over
Speaker 1: the card reader UM. And basically it is usually a
Speaker 1: very slim uh compact device that can read the magnetic
Speaker 1: strip on there on the card. So basically what happens
Speaker 1: is if if a scammer has installed a skimmer on
Speaker 1: an A t M, when you put your card through it,
Speaker 1: both the skimmer and the A t M are reading
Speaker 1: the card number. Now the pin block them. 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 encrypted,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's encrypted on the card, so it
Speaker 1: can't the machine has to decipher that. The skimmer can't
Speaker 1: do that. So what the scammers do. They will they
Speaker 1: will install a very tiny camera. You know. Cameras are
Speaker 1: teeny tiny these days. You know, we've got them in
Speaker 1: our smartphones and other types of phones. UM, they're sitting
Speaker 1: on top of our laptops and and and computers. Because
Speaker 1: they're so small. UM, people can in small. In small,
Speaker 1: install a small camera right above the area where the
Speaker 1: you type in your number, and then they'll they'll record
Speaker 1: your keypad punches. And then what they'll do is they'll
Speaker 1: match the keypad punch to the information that they've skimmed
Speaker 1: off your card, and then they've got essentially your card
Speaker 1: number and your pen all in one place and can
Speaker 1: then access money from your account at any a t M.
Speaker 1: And a lot of cases too, they don't try to
Speaker 1: take as much as they can get. A lot of cases,
Speaker 1: banks that I know of here in the United States
Speaker 1: will give you a maximum amount of day, usually something
Speaker 1: like three dollars per day UM. A lot of times
Speaker 1: these scammers won't do that. They'll take out twenty dollars,
Speaker 1: and the idea being that be harder to detect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh well I must have I must have taken out
Speaker 1: I don't remember what I what that was. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't that much. It wasn't like somebody was scamming me.
Speaker 1: Although if you do, if you're which this, by the way,
Speaker 1: is why it's important for you to review your your
Speaker 1: bank statements on a regular basis, because you may notice
Speaker 1: that you're withdrawing money from places that you are not
Speaker 1: physically at like Los Angeles or something, when you're not
Speaker 1: in l A. If you're in l A and you
Speaker 1: see that you were drawn from l A, you may
Speaker 1: very well have been the person to have done that.
Speaker 1: I don't mean to say that any withdrawal from l
Speaker 1: A is obviously fraudulent, right people who people everything's on it?
Speaker 1: Does this mean I have to drive to San Jose
Speaker 1: if I want to withdraw money, Yes, that is what
Speaker 1: I meant. Um. There are some some people working on
Speaker 1: newer types of verification technology. I saw one they're trying
Speaker 1: out in Poland, which is using biometrics. They do a
Speaker 1: scan of your finger and they don't use your finger print.
Speaker 1: They're looking at the veins in your finger which is
Speaker 1: pretty smart because again fingerprints, you can lift a fingerprint
Speaker 1: and you can fake fingerprint readers. It. The more sophisticated
Speaker 1: the detection device, the less likely someone's going to go
Speaker 1: through all the trouble to um to fool it, because
Speaker 1: it is a lot of I mean, it takes a
Speaker 1: lot of investment just to get the stuff too to
Speaker 1: be able to fool these devices. But yeah, if you wanna,
Speaker 1: fingerprint is not full proof because you could lift a
Speaker 1: print off of something and then create a latex print
Speaker 1: and fool some machines using that. We've seen that happen before. UM.
Speaker 1: There's also I know you mentioned the cameras, but we
Speaker 1: should also mention some UH some skimmers will also use
Speaker 1: a fake KEYPADAH, which is essentially a key logger that's
Speaker 1: logging up pen entries. So if you ever walk up
Speaker 1: to an a t M and and it looks like
Speaker 1: parts of the machine don't match up exactly like the
Speaker 1: it's just a different coloration or made out of a
Speaker 1: different material, and it just looks a little odd, that's
Speaker 1: a warning sign. Doesn't necessarily mean that a skimmer has
Speaker 1: hit that machine. It may just be that that particular
Speaker 1: machine was manufactured in an odd way. But anything that
Speaker 1: looks a little out of place should be a big
Speaker 1: red flag to you and UH and I would highly
Speaker 1: recommend that if you do notice something when you walk
Speaker 1: up to an a t M UH that's like that,
Speaker 1: that you find a different one, don't use that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and keep in mind where it is to the
Speaker 1: more isolated a t M s are more likely to
Speaker 1: be the ones that UH scammers are going to target.
Speaker 1: Because they will be easier to modify. Um, because this
Speaker 1: stuff takes a little bit of time and effort, and
Speaker 1: if you're doing it in a high traffic area, someone's
Speaker 1: gonna notice. Yeah. Like, for example, the the a t
Speaker 1: m s that you might see in a popular gas station,
Speaker 1: UM are a whole lot likely a whole lot more
Speaker 1: likely to be okay, because if a cashier is standing
Speaker 1: right across from it all day long, it's unlikely that
Speaker 1: a scammer is going to have the time to install
Speaker 1: those devices without getting caught doing what are you doing?
Speaker 1: Or something like a busy airport, Yeah, where there's a
Speaker 1: lot of security already there. I mean, it's just it's
Speaker 1: such a it would be such a high risk endeavor
Speaker 1: that it would you know, you look at risk versus
Speaker 1: reward from a thief standpoint, it could be less likely
Speaker 1: to be hit. That's not saying that some enterprising thief
Speaker 1: hasn't tried it, but but it's less likely. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: in fact, we've had a we had a rash here
Speaker 1: in the Atlanta area not terribly long ago where people
Speaker 1: were knocking over a t M s with their cars
Speaker 1: and just taking the alif or bulldozers. Yeah, yeah, basically
Speaker 1: because it's easier to crow bar your way into one
Speaker 1: than bother trying to because we didn't mention the code.
Speaker 1: This soft part of the a t M is it's
Speaker 1: a safe. Yeah, you know it's there's a safe that's
Speaker 1: inside these machines. That's where all the money is kept
Speaker 1: in a vault, in a safe in the machine. So
Speaker 1: if you were to take the whole machine, you're taking
Speaker 1: 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 going to happen. I caught
Speaker 1: myself that I told you it was gonna happen. Um.
Speaker 1: A lot of these have things inside the vault that
Speaker 1: if if stuff goes wrong, it will ruin the money
Speaker 1: inside there, like essentially a little little explosive charges. Usually
Speaker 1: some of them have um explosive charges full of gas,
Speaker 1: so that if if a thief is trying to use
Speaker 1: a gas explosion to uh to open the vault, that
Speaker 1: it actually has gas that counteracts the explosive gas, rendering
Speaker 1: in inert so and that in that case, it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily destroying the money inside, it's just trying to destroy
Speaker 1: the the methodology that the thief is using to get
Speaker 1: the vault open. So yeah, there's some other tech involved
Speaker 1: here that's kind of interesting. Um. Now I use a
Speaker 1: t M S. I mean, I try to be careful
Speaker 1: about and I try to keep a good eye on
Speaker 1: making sure that whatever device I'm using looks you know,
Speaker 1: totally legit and everything. Uh it's it's says. So I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that a t M s are so dangerous
Speaker 1: that no one should use them, but it does bear
Speaker 1: repeating that you should be vigilant and pay attention when
Speaker 1: you come up to an a t M don't just
Speaker 1: you know, walk up and ignore all uh all safety
Speaker 1: especially you know, not just the machine itself, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's always good to take a quick look around you
Speaker 1: to make sure you're not going to be mugged. I've
Speaker 1: never been mugged. I don't want it to happen. I'm
Speaker 1: going to try and keep that street going. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's one of those things is that you know,
Speaker 1: banks often would tell customers to you know, certain follow
Speaker 1: certain safety guidelines and be alert when you're using those machines,
Speaker 1: and you know, make sure you have your card ready
Speaker 1: before you go up to one. And uh and and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, don't don't linger. Don't count your money as
Speaker 1: your until the dealing is done, I guess um, But
Speaker 1: don't count your money right there at the machine. You know,
Speaker 1: don't give thieves the opportunity to pounce on you in that.
Speaker 1: In 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, talk about
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, after you've gone clubbing
Speaker 1: all night long and you need that cash because you're
Speaker 1: about to go to that all night pancake house that
Speaker 1: only accepts cash. You know, just bear in mind your
Speaker 1: surroundings in the situation and be careful. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed that look back at tech Stuff and remember, if
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us, you can
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