Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and
Speaker 1: i love all things tech and I'm a little short
Speaker 1: on cash at the moment. But no fear, because it's
Speaker 1: time for a classic episode and Chris Poulette and I
Speaker 1: are about to go and visit an a t M. Yes,
Speaker 1: this classic episode is all about a t M S
Speaker 1: And I'm pretty sure I say a t M machine
Speaker 1: and pen number a billion times in this so if
Speaker 1: that bugs you, my bad. But otherwise enjoy this classic episode,
Speaker 1: which originally published on November two thousand eleven. They say
Speaker 1: the best things in life are free. You're such a card.
Speaker 1: Today we're going Today we're gonna talk about automated teller
Speaker 1: machines or a t M senes. Oh, we'll also be
Speaker 1: talking about personal identification numbers or pen numbers. Five people
Speaker 1: just paused the podcast so that they could write us
Speaker 1: an angry email about the redundancy. They probably also went
Speaker 1: ahead and unsubscribed. Possibly yeah, but we in case, just
Speaker 1: for you people who have those pet peeves, and I
Speaker 1: totally understand. I'm not sharing. I share those pet peeves.
Speaker 1: I am not criticizing. You may very well hear me
Speaker 1: say a t M machine and or PEN number at
Speaker 1: least once in this podcast as a way and and
Speaker 1: not not in a way to needle you. Just that's
Speaker 1: it's it's stamped in my brain that way. Well, pen
Speaker 1: number two is also a little bit more useful than
Speaker 1: a t M machine since pen is also a pin.
Speaker 1: Do you have your pen? Yeah? Right, no number exactly?
Speaker 1: Do you have your personal identification numbers? So, yes, we're
Speaker 1: talking about a t M S today, and we've had
Speaker 1: a few people asked us about how a t m
Speaker 1: S work. We assume it was all on the up
Speaker 1: and up, not to find out how they work so
Speaker 1: that you can exploit them. I did find out an
Speaker 1: article about how to hack into one. Wow. Well, and
Speaker 1: that gets a little complicated. We'll talk about that. Why
Speaker 1: that is in the case, Um, yeah, because it really
Speaker 1: does depend. But first let's talk about how a t
Speaker 1: M S came to be. That's somewhat in dispute. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: there there are multiple people who were inventing things that
Speaker 1: resemble what a t M S are today in different
Speaker 1: parts of the world around the same time, although the
Speaker 1: earliest one I could find was from a Mr. Luther
Speaker 1: sim Jean Yes who was born in Turkey. It was
Speaker 1: a son of Armenians who were sadly his family was
Speaker 1: was 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 it doesn't really resemble the way a
Speaker 1: t M s look and and act now, But it
Speaker 1: was an idea of a of an of machine that
Speaker 1: would dispense money. And it was run for a six
Speaker 1: month trial at the City Bank of New York, which
Speaker 1: we now call City Bank yes uh. And after the
Speaker 1: six months the trial ended and City Bank decided not
Speaker 1: to extend the trial, not to implement it, and um,
Speaker 1: at least according to one source I read, the reason
Speaker 1: behind it was that it just didn't get a lot
Speaker 1: of traction the people. People just didn't want to use
Speaker 1: a machine to interact with their bank accounts. They preferred
Speaker 1: to have a person to person interaction in a bank
Speaker 1: and um, apparently the people who were using it were
Speaker 1: a bunch 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 withdrawing money in the first place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're talking about people with ill gotten game gamblers
Speaker 1: for example, places where gambling was not legal, and um,
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 S, UM,
Speaker 1: they weren't a t M S. They didn't function like
Speaker 1: today's machines do. UM. In some cases you needed a
Speaker 1: special card that wasn't actually tied to your your bank account.
Speaker 1: In fact, a lot of them used credit cards instead. UM.
Speaker 1: For a long time credit cards were looked down upon, UM,
Speaker 1: but some of them use special vouchers or coins. Yes
Speaker 1: and yeah, And in Britain you had to UH on
Speaker 1: one of the early trials, you had to go inside
Speaker 1: and get a voucher. You would get a ten pound voucher.
Speaker 1: So if you wanted fifty pounds, you have to get
Speaker 1: five vouchers. That would you take outside of the machine,
Speaker 1: Which raises the question why would you not just go
Speaker 1: and withdraw the money directly while you're there, unless, of course,
Speaker 1: you just wanted the convenience of being able to get
Speaker 1: at ten pounds at any given time in the future.
Speaker 1: And I guess that's the argument you'd have to make, Like,
Speaker 1: instead of walking out the bank with fifty pounds, which
Speaker 1: you 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 day, as you realize, oh, I need some more
Speaker 1: walking around money or getting about money, as I like
Speaker 1: to say, you would go and use one of those
Speaker 1: vouchers to get some more money out. But it did
Speaker 1: seem to decrease the convenience factor of the automated teller
Speaker 1: machine somewhat. But yeah, in this case, you wouldn't need
Speaker 1: a card with stuff and coded on it. You would
Speaker 1: just need your voucher to put in and then it
Speaker 1: would spit money out. It became like a money vending machine. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh in night in Britain there was a several
Speaker 1: banks use 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 uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've had that happen too. That's not a good feeling,
Speaker 1: is it, um, Yeah, except this time in this case
Speaker 1: we're talking about doing it on purpose. Uh yes. So
Speaker 1: some of the other players in this space, and this
Speaker 1: mainly the real development of a t M S beyond
Speaker 1: the early nineteen nine example took place in the sixties.
Speaker 1: So you had people like James Goodfellow, who he secured
Speaker 1: a patent on an a t M like machine in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six. He also came up with the idea
Speaker 1: of storing a personal identification number on a magnetic strip
Speaker 1: that would be printed on the back of a card,
Speaker 1: so that would become the A t M card eventually. Uh.
Speaker 1: They had also John D. White, who invented a free
Speaker 1: standing automated teller machine. A lot of these other machines
Speaker 1: were built into the corner of a building. It was
Speaker 1: actually part of a larger structure. Um. This was more
Speaker 1: of a free standing um A machine. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: there's John Shepherd Baron, who I think I think most
Speaker 1: sources I saw credited him as the true father of
Speaker 1: the A t M. Really, 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 was installed in Barclays Bank in London in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven. But you also had Don wet Cell. Now
Speaker 1: he was working in America and his machine started coming
Speaker 1: out around nineteen sixty eight, and he was known to
Speaker 1: have worked at least in part on Shepherd Baron's work
Speaker 1: as well. He kind of took Shepherd Baron's work and
Speaker 1: then uh change things like enhanced things and drop some
Speaker 1: things and included other things, so uh sort of used
Speaker 1: as a launching point for his own work. So you
Speaker 1: get a lot of conflicting information about who is really
Speaker 1: the inventor of the A t M. I think part
Speaker 1: of it depends on where you're from. If you're from
Speaker 1: England and it's John Shepherd Baron, Yeah, and uh um
Speaker 1: the National Museum of American History, the Smithsonian recognized wet
Speaker 1: cell Um and this kind Penny Docutel, which was a
Speaker 1: baggage handling company UM as the people who created the
Speaker 1: A t M. So it's yeah, I guess you. Like
Speaker 1: I said, it all depends on who you ask, sort
Speaker 1: of like television, yeah, or radio. Yeah, they're like many
Speaker 1: other inventions. There's uh the story, the real story is
Speaker 1: far more complicated than just a factoid that you'll find
Speaker 1: in a history book. Yeah. Now, I was gonna say. Now,
Speaker 1: even though in the sixties, UM A t m s
Speaker 1: became a lot more common, banks started as uh including
Speaker 1: them as part of their services. UM. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, Uh, the Fortune article I read by Ellen
Speaker 1: Florian Um and uh Doris Burke and Jenny Murrow basically
Speaker 1: was saying that they quoted a chemical bank advertisement and
Speaker 1: said um on September two, our bank will open at
Speaker 1: nine o'clock and we'll never close again. And that was
Speaker 1: the Rockville Center branch at ten North Village Avenue on
Speaker 1: Long Island. Yeah. The idea being that, of course, you
Speaker 1: could access your account at any time and make withdrawals
Speaker 1: or transfers or whatever without having to go into the bank.
Speaker 1: Because of course, the reason why people are coming up
Speaker 1: with this in the first place was for convenience, because
Speaker 1: bank hours are notoriously um short. Yeah, that will people
Speaker 1: talk about bankers hours, where you know, in order to
Speaker 1: actually go and visit the bank, you might have to
Speaker 1: take time out of your work day in order to
Speaker 1: you know, and then you have to go inside a
Speaker 1: bank and stand in line. See for some of our listeners,
Speaker 1: this is going to sound completely foreign to them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because apart from maybe opening up a bank account or
Speaker 1: perhaps going in for a loan or something like that,
Speaker 1: you just don't have to do that anymore. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you want to do the day to day stuff,
Speaker 1: depositing a check, finding out how much money you have
Speaker 1: in the bank, making withdrawal, maybe even transferring money between accounts,
Speaker 1: you can do all that in an a t M. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's some cases you can do some of that through
Speaker 1: online banking as well. So we've we've almost completely eliminated
Speaker 1: the need to go into a physical space. But back
Speaker 1: in the day, it used to be that if you
Speaker 1: wanted to do anything to do with your money, you
Speaker 1: had to go and stand in line and wait to
Speaker 1: talk to a teller and then they pull up your
Speaker 1: records and do you do all that in person, face
Speaker 1: to face. And actually in the sixties, back when uh,
Speaker 1: back when these were launching again, the people weren't flogging
Speaker 1: to them immediately. There were In fact, some banks were
Speaker 1: a little skeptical that people would ever want to interact
Speaker 1: with a machine as opposed to a human. They thought
Speaker 1: that the human interaction was a key component of the
Speaker 1: banking process. And it really wasn't until the eighties that
Speaker 1: 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, Chris and I will tell you
Speaker 1: more about A t M S in just a second,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
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 um,
Speaker 1: and it said, Um, I see what they did there,
Speaker 1: The machine used increase during the storm in uh city
Speaker 1: banks market share in New York City deposits had doubled,
Speaker 1: and so the rest of the banks moved to catch up.
Speaker 1: And that basically started a revolution, at least in New York. Um.
Speaker 1: Of course that's a lot of people, so that that
Speaker 1: can affect things. And people go in there and see
Speaker 1: how people are using the A t M S and
Speaker 1: they go back home, you know. Yep. Yeah, And like
Speaker 1: I said, in the eighties, that really started to take off.
Speaker 1: So I guess now we can finally start getting into
Speaker 1: what makes up an a t M and how they
Speaker 1: how they actually work. Uh. Now, part of this involves
Speaker 1: the way that we access the A t M s uh.
Speaker 1: And and not just with the key the keypad or
Speaker 1: the touch screen, depending upon the model that you're using,
Speaker 1: but the card you have, your A t M card,
Speaker 1: whatever you're using to access the A t M. And
Speaker 1: there are variations on this, but all of them have
Speaker 1: a a magnetic stripe or mag stripe on them. And uh,
Speaker 1: you 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. Yeah, the material inside there, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: even 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 part article and so that's like bits, zeros
Speaker 1: and ones. So by creating them in either a north
Speaker 1: or south pole direction, and then you you've got thousands
Speaker 1: of these right, and in one strip. You can encode
Speaker 1: information that way, and that information is going to have
Speaker 1: things like the the account number on it, so that
Speaker 1: it has you know, it's able to say this card
Speaker 1: belongs to this account. Uh. It may also have the
Speaker 1: pen on their the personal identification number, so that you
Speaker 1: can have that as sort of a key pass entrigue.
Speaker 1: You know, as long as the pen that you enter
Speaker 1: into the A t M matches the one that's on
Speaker 1: the card and in the account, as long as all
Speaker 1: three of those are are the same, then you'll be
Speaker 1: able to access your information. So that's on your card,
Speaker 1: which means of course that the A t M has
Speaker 1: to have some sort of card reader involved, which you
Speaker 1: know it's a magnetic stripe reader that you know, depending
Speaker 1: on the style of the A t M, it maybe
Speaker 1: one where you put your card in and it sucks
Speaker 1: it into the machine and you hope when your transactions
Speaker 1: over it will spit it back out again. Or what
Speaker 1: I see most commonly now are the kinds where you
Speaker 1: swipe it. You either have a vertical swipe where you
Speaker 1: just swipe the card down the side of a little reader,
Speaker 1: or you inserted into a slot and pull it back
Speaker 1: out again quickly. And in either case, the what happens
Speaker 1: is those little magnets go past a detector because the
Speaker 1: magnets are in motion, the detector detects the difference of
Speaker 1: the magnetism on each of those little bars and can
Speaker 1: read that as whatever the information is. Yeah, so all
Speaker 1: the information that's printed on the card, um the number
Speaker 1: that's embossed in the card in your name, the machine
Speaker 1: is not reading or looking at any of that stuff.
Speaker 1: It's taking everything from the magnetic stripe. Which is why
Speaker 1: you should not put your your credit cards or a
Speaker 1: T M S cards or anything like that near powerful magnets,
Speaker 1: right because that could actually realign those little magnetic particles
Speaker 1: inside the film. And some people call it de magnetizing,
Speaker 1: but really it's just realigning those polls so it no
Speaker 1: longer it might spout out gibberish now when you when
Speaker 1: you swipe it, or anyway, it's not going to correspond
Speaker 1: with your information and suddenly your card doesn't work anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can also find the same thing if you've used
Speaker 1: it too much or if the magnetic stripe gets damaged
Speaker 1: in some way. Um. You know, some people say the
Speaker 1: eel skin wallets. Yeah, I hear that a lot, because
Speaker 1: you know, and there are a lot of different theories
Speaker 1: about Actually the theory I've heard that seems to explain
Speaker 1: it the most, or it seems to be the most
Speaker 1: logical to me. Eel skin wallets some people claim came
Speaker 1: from electric eels and that somehow has some sort of
Speaker 1: electric impulse still stored in it, and that's what's screwing
Speaker 1: up the cards. Count me skeptical on that one exactly.
Speaker 1: But a lot of these have a magnetic clasp so
Speaker 1: that when you close it it it remains closed, and
Speaker 1: the magnetic clasp depending on how your card is, how
Speaker 1: you're storing your card in the wallet, Um, the stripe
Speaker 1: might be close enough to the magnetic class that the
Speaker 1: magnetic class is is realigning those magnetic particles in the film,
Speaker 1: 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 all so meant that those A
Speaker 1: t M s had the benefit of security through obscurity.
Speaker 1: That's true because UH would be thief would have to
Speaker 1: focus on a particular type of a t M and
Speaker 1: the things that might work on that a t M
Speaker 1: would not necessarily work on a t M s for
Speaker 1: other banks, So it's somewhat limited the liability and the
Speaker 1: vulnerability of those machines. Once the machine started to move
Speaker 1: toward more computer based operating systems like Lennox and Windows,
Speaker 1: then you opened up new opportunities for thieves to target
Speaker 1: specific parts of the A t M infrastructure, and UH
Speaker 1: and made it in some ways more vulnerable than the
Speaker 1: older models. Now I say that, but the truth is
Speaker 1: you can actually find these older model A t M
Speaker 1: s on plenty of sites like eBay, where you could
Speaker 1: buy an A t M if you wanted to, and
Speaker 1: if your goal was to deconstruct, to hack this a
Speaker 1: t M so you would learn how it works, you
Speaker 1: could potentially find vulnerabilities in that system to exploit. Don't
Speaker 1: do that, it's illegal. You don't want to do that,
Speaker 1: but there that That is one of the downsides to
Speaker 1: the old systems too, is that, you know, it's not
Speaker 1: like these things were. It's not like you had to
Speaker 1: have a license to own one. You know, you just
Speaker 1: had to buy one. So you just had to find
Speaker 1: someone willing to sell one and then you can buy it. So, yes,
Speaker 1: you've got your CPU in there. Uh. However, the A
Speaker 1: t M is not its own standalone UM machine like that.
Speaker 1: 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 to type in members or both um and
Speaker 1: 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 dollars in your account you
Speaker 1: want to withdraw twenty dollars, it will say, okay, well
Speaker 1: Jonathan's got three dollars, so I can give him twenty dollars.
Speaker 1: And he's withdrawn twenty dollars, so it makes a note
Speaker 1: of that in the account, so it says, now he
Speaker 1: has two left. Yeah. The way this works is that
Speaker 1: so you can think of the especially the older a
Speaker 1: t 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 rip to uh uh to
Speaker 1: two allow you to input your pen and to display
Speaker 1: the information. But then what it would do is the
Speaker 1: terminal that you're using would connect to a host processor.
Speaker 1: Now this would be a computer that belongs to whatever
Speaker 1: financial institution again is owns that a t M. Now,
Speaker 1: if that's your bank, then that's pretty much where this ends.
Speaker 1: It goes, it refers to your account. Make it confirms
Speaker 1: that you that you are who you say you are,
Speaker 1: and that at least according to your pen and that
Speaker 1: you have the funds that you require in order for
Speaker 1: you to get whatever it is you're asking. So again
Speaker 1: like in your example, that that you have at least
Speaker 1: twenty dollars you can withdraw um. And then it will
Speaker 1: send the information back to the machine that you're at
Speaker 1: and either confirmed that it can dispense the cash or
Speaker 1: deny it, and then the machine does whatever it's supposed
Speaker 1: to do. Uh, if your bank is a different bank,
Speaker 1: than why happens is the it will go to the
Speaker 1: host processor. The host processor will then route that request
Speaker 1: to the specific financial institution that you belong to and
Speaker 1: get the permission there, and then your bank essentially will
Speaker 1: wirelessly transfer funds to the financial institution and charge of
Speaker 1: that a t M, and then that financial institution will
Speaker 1: allow the a t M to dispense cash because the
Speaker 1: money has been you know, it's not losing money, it's
Speaker 1: had the wireless transfer from your bank. This is also
Speaker 1: why you'll find a lot of a t M s
Speaker 1: have those fees on them, yes, the usage fees, because otherwise,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just an access thing that you know,
Speaker 1: banks are doing out of the goodness of their hearts.
Speaker 1: But these are bankers. We know they don't have that,
Speaker 1: right bankers and lawyers right, So um, hey, I I
Speaker 1: watched the documentary at Christmas, Carol, I know how this works.
Speaker 1: So so in order to make money off of these transactions,
Speaker 1: that's why you have that usage fee, because you know
Speaker 1: it's going to charge you for the whole process of
Speaker 1: having the money transferred from your financial institution to the bank.
Speaker 1: And depending upon the way that the different financial institutions 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 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 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 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. Yeah, 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. We have a little bit more
Speaker 1: to talk about as far as a t M s go,
Speaker 1: but before we get there, let's take another quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. If it's supposed to be doing
Speaker 1: it one bill at a time, and the thickness sensor 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 a
Speaker 1: pair of bills, or whatever it happens to be to
Speaker 1: a reject been inside the A t M. So the
Speaker 1: A t M has has a bend that collects rejects,
Speaker 1: and this can also be bills that are worn or torn.
Speaker 1: If if it detects that, that's going to send it
Speaker 1: to the reject ben. Uh. And so the ben is
Speaker 1: just 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, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, while the machine is making sure that it's
Speaker 1: dispensing the right number and denomination of bills to you. Um.
Speaker 1: There's also an electronic journal that's part of an a
Speaker 1: t M, so that it's recording every transaction that's happening
Speaker 1: with that machine, and it also records whenever any bill
Speaker 1: gets sent to the reject been. And that way, when
Speaker 1: someone comes into service the machine, either to refill it
Speaker 1: or to fix it or whatever, they can take a
Speaker 1: look at the journal and see, uh, you know, how
Speaker 1: frequently are is the reject been getting a bill sent
Speaker 1: to it. If it's happening a lot, that might mean
Speaker 1: that either the sensors need to be adjusted or that
Speaker 1: the feeding mechanism needs to be adjusted so that it's
Speaker 1: no longer pulling more than one bill at a time,
Speaker 1: or in might mean that the actual bills that are
Speaker 1: being put into the machine are of two. They're not
Speaker 1: they're not fresh enough that you know that something needs
Speaker 1: to change. This one's a little stale, yeah, exactly, because
Speaker 1: too many of them are going into the reject ben
Speaker 1: So so it's got built built in error correction if
Speaker 1: you will. Yeah, it's and and some of that again
Speaker 1: is mechanical, and some of it's just saying, hey, stop
Speaker 1: putting crappy money in me because I can't give it
Speaker 1: to anyone. And the bank's like, but we don't want
Speaker 1: to give money to anyone, And then they twirl their
Speaker 1: mustaches and 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 tuppence 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 the machine, so that
Speaker 1: can you you could see the machines working correctly. Also
Speaker 1: provides an accounting uh in case there's ever any dispute
Speaker 1: about what the machine was dispensing or whether there was
Speaker 1: a question about um, how the machine was used out
Speaker 1: of course, now, UM A t M s also usually
Speaker 1: have some kind of security camera UM nearby, just to
Speaker 1: watch that people are who they say they are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you can match up the the time on the
Speaker 1: security camera with the time that was listed in the
Speaker 1: journal and go back and review footage. Uh if someone
Speaker 1: has if any of you out there have ever had
Speaker 1: your card number and and pen stolen so that someone
Speaker 1: else has accessed your account through an a t UM
Speaker 1: you realize, of course this would be a really important feature.
Speaker 1: I'm one of those people, by the way. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: that's actually that was but my bank was very good
Speaker 1: at letting me know, and it was very proactive in
Speaker 1: making sure that that got fixed. So yeah, yeah, now
Speaker 1: that's that's true. These uh, these machines are sophisticated and
Speaker 1: and specialized, but they're also uh in some ways not
Speaker 1: so sophisticated that they can't be fooled or not not
Speaker 1: necessarily fooled, but UM also that other people can come
Speaker 1: along and take information by using devices such as skimmers,
Speaker 1: which can be put over the card reader UM and
Speaker 1: basically it is usually a very slim uh compact device
Speaker 1: that can read the magnetic strip on there on the card.
Speaker 1: So basically what happens is if if a scammer has
Speaker 1: installed a skimmer on an A t M, when you
Speaker 1: put your card through it, both the skimmer and the
Speaker 1: A t M are reading the card number. Now the
Speaker 1: pin block them. In the United States, federal regulations require
Speaker 1: that the pin block, which is the four digit pin
Speaker 1: uh information UM, must be encrypted when it's sent along.
Speaker 1: So UH to some degree, you would be protected if
Speaker 1: just your number was going through the skimmer, because you
Speaker 1: would need the pin block encrypted, you know, and it's
Speaker 1: encrypted on the card, so it can't the machine has
Speaker 1: to decipher that. The skimmer can't do that. So what
Speaker 1: the scammers do. They will they will install a very
Speaker 1: tiny camera. You know, cameras are teeny tiny these days.
Speaker 1: You know, we've got them in our smartphones and other
Speaker 1: types of phones. UM they're sitting on top of our
Speaker 1: laptops and and and computers because they're so small. UM.
Speaker 1: People can in small, in small, install a small camera
Speaker 1: right above the area where the you type in your number,
Speaker 1: and then they'll they'll record your keypad punches. And then
Speaker 1: what they'll do is they'll match the keypad punch to
Speaker 1: the information that they've ski MMed off your card and
Speaker 1: then they've got essentially your card number and your pen
Speaker 1: all in one place and can then access money from
Speaker 1: your account at any a t M. And a lot
Speaker 1: of cases too, they don't try to take as much
Speaker 1: as they can get. A lot of cases, UM, banks
Speaker 1: that I know of here in the United States will
Speaker 1: give you a maximum amount of day, usually something like
Speaker 1: three per day. UM. A lot of times these scammers
Speaker 1: won't do that. They'll take out twenty dollars and the
Speaker 1: idea being that be harder to detect. Yeah, well I
Speaker 1: must have. I must have taken out I don't remember
Speaker 1: what I what that was, But it wasn't that much.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like somebody was scamming me. Although if you do,
Speaker 1: if you're which this, by the way, is why it's
Speaker 1: important for you to review your your bank statements on
Speaker 1: a regular basis, uh, because you may notice that you're
Speaker 1: withdrawing money from places that you are not physically at,
Speaker 1: like Los Angeles or something when you're not in l A.
Speaker 1: If you're in l A and you see that you
Speaker 1: were drawn from l A, you may very well have
Speaker 1: been the person who have done that. I don't mean
Speaker 1: to say that any withdrawal from l A is obviously fraudulent,
Speaker 1: right people who people everything's on it? Does this mean
Speaker 1: I have to drive to San Jose if I want
Speaker 1: to withdraw money, Yes, that is what I meant. Um.
Speaker 1: There are some some people working on newer types of
Speaker 1: verification technology. I saw one they're trying out in Poland,
Speaker 1: which is using biometrics. They do a scan of your
Speaker 1: finger and they don't use your fingerprint. They're looking at
Speaker 1: the veins in your finger which is pretty smart because
Speaker 1: again fingerprints, you can lift a fingerprint and you can
Speaker 1: fake fingerprint readers. It. The more sophisticated the detection device,
Speaker 1: the less likely someone's going to go through all the
Speaker 1: trouble to um to fool it, because it is a
Speaker 1: lot of I mean, it takes a lot of investment
Speaker 1: just to get the stuff too to be able to
Speaker 1: fool these devices. But yeah, if you wanna, fingerprint is
Speaker 1: not full proof because you could lift a print off
Speaker 1: of something and then create a late x print. Uh,
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 it looks like parts
Speaker 1: of the machine don't match up exactly like the it's
Speaker 1: just a different coloration or made out of a different material,
Speaker 1: and it just looks a little odd, that's a warning sign.
Speaker 1: Doesn't necessarily mean that a skimmer has hit that machine.
Speaker 1: It may just be that that particular machine was manufactured
Speaker 1: in an odd way. But anything that looks a little
Speaker 1: out 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 time to install those devices without getting
Speaker 1: caught doing hey 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: to be less likely to be hit. That's not saying
Speaker 1: that some enterprising thief hasn't tried it, no, no, but
Speaker 1: but it's less likely. Yeah. Well, in fact, we've had
Speaker 1: a we had a rash here in the Atlanta area
Speaker 1: not terribly long ago where people were knocking over a
Speaker 1: t M S with their cars and just taking the
Speaker 1: a forklifts or bulldozers. Yeah, yeah, because it's easier to
Speaker 1: add to crow bar your way into one than bother
Speaker 1: trying to Because we didn't mention the part of the
Speaker 1: a t M is it's a safe. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: it's there's a safe that's inside these machines. That's where
Speaker 1: all the money is kept in a vault, in a
Speaker 1: safe in the machine. So if you were to take
Speaker 1: the whole machine, you're taking the vault. Now before before
Speaker 1: any of you say, hey, I'm going to go on
Speaker 1: a life of crime and start knocking over a t
Speaker 1: M machines a t M S. I knew. I told
Speaker 1: you at the beginning of the show that it was
Speaker 1: going to happen. I caught myself that I told you
Speaker 1: it was gonna happen. Um A lot of these have
Speaker 1: things inside the vault that if if stuff goes wrong,
Speaker 1: it will ruin the money inside there. Essentially a little
Speaker 1: little explosive charges. Usually some of them have um explosive
Speaker 1: charges full of gas, so that if if a thief
Speaker 1: is trying to use a gas explosion to uh to
Speaker 1: open the vault, that it actually has gas that counteracts
Speaker 1: the explosive gas, rendering in inert so and that in
Speaker 1: that case, it's not necessarily destroying the money inside, it's
Speaker 1: just trying to destroy the the methodology that the thief
Speaker 1: is using to get the vault open. So yeah, there's
Speaker 1: some other tech involved here that's kind of interesting. Um.
Speaker 1: Now I use a t M S. I mean I
Speaker 1: I try to be careful about and I try to
Speaker 1: keep a good eye on making sure that whatever device
Speaker 1: I'm using looks you know, totally legit and everything. Uh
Speaker 1: it's it's ays. So I'm not saying that a t
Speaker 1: M s are so dangerous that no one should use them,
Speaker 1: but it does bear repeating that you should be vigilant
Speaker 1: and pay attention when you come up to an a
Speaker 1: t M Don't just you know, walk up and ignore
Speaker 1: all uh all safety especially you know, not just the
Speaker 1: machine itself, but you know, it's always good to take
Speaker 1: a quick look around you to make sure you're not
Speaker 1: gonna be mugged. I've never been mugged. I don't want
Speaker 1: it to happen. I'm gonna try and keep that street going.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's that's one of those things is that,
Speaker 1: you know, banks often would tell customers to you know,
Speaker 1: certain follow certain safety guidelines and be alert when you're
Speaker 1: using those machines, and you know, make sure you have
Speaker 1: your card ready before you go up to one and
Speaker 1: uh and and uh, you know, don't don't linger. Don't
Speaker 1: count your money as your until the dealing is done,
Speaker 1: I guess, But don't count your money right there at
Speaker 1: the machine. You know, don't give thieves the opportunity to
Speaker 1: pounce on you. Uh in that in those cases now,
Speaker 1: of course, if you're in a nice, busy street and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people around, you're probably in better
Speaker 1: shape than uh. You know, I'm talking about in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night, after you've gone clubbing all night
Speaker 1: long and you need that cash because you're about to
Speaker 1: go to that all night pancake house that only accepts cash.
Speaker 1: Just bear in mind your surroundings in the situation and
Speaker 1: be careful. Yes, Also, it never hurts to try to
Speaker 1: cover your hand when you're typing in your pin because
Speaker 1: even if you don't see the little camera, it is
Speaker 1: possible that it may be one somewhere around. But it's
Speaker 1: just a good habit to get into. Oh, it makes
Speaker 1: it really hard to type in your pin correctly. I've
Speaker 1: 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. UM. Yeah, the there there
Speaker 1: is one exception. I mean, with all the the thousands
Speaker 1: of 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 it only dispenses frozen herring. And that wraps up
Speaker 1: that classic episode of tech Stuff. I hope you guys
Speaker 1: weren't suffering from withdrawal get it because of a t
Speaker 1: M S. I'm sorry anyway, I hope you enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: We will be talking about all new technology in the
Speaker 1: next episodes, so make sure you stay tuned for that,
Speaker 1: and if you have suggestions for future episodes, we'll just
Speaker 1: get in touch with me let me know what you think.
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