Imagine this: you are travelling alone in a foreign country and you get mugged by a gang who strip-searches you and takes all your luggage, documents, mobile phones, and money (including the stash of emergency cash you were carrying in your shoe ).
You are standing there, in the middle of the night, barefoot, without the means even to make a phonecall to your family.
But no need to panic. You have signed up for the emergency PIN service. You head to the nearest ATM, select the emergency option, type in your username and an 8-digit password, and it spits out a one-off payment of $1000. This should be enough to take a taxi to the nearest hotel and make further arrangements.
For security reasons, this service will work only once, and needs to be reactivated with a new password after each use. The password is entered using the letter markings on the keypad, and is required to be at least 8 characters long to avoid brute-force attacks.-- kinemojo, Feb 12 2007 Likely to encourage a new kind of mugging.-- hippo, Feb 12 2007 ....//you get mugged by a gang who strip-searches you and takes all your luggage, documents...// and your emergency pin number, which they force you to use at the nearest atm machine, as they apply a set of pliers to your goolies/nipples whatever.-- xenzag, Feb 12 2007 Just because it could sometimes be mis-used doesn't mean it wouldn't be useful in many cases. I've been far from home, wanting money, looking at a cash machine that connects to my bank, and unable to communicate with the damned thing. [+]-- baconbrain, Feb 12 2007 what if your password is in western characters and you're at a chinese ATM?-- kdmurray, Feb 13 2007 People with nothing better to do will just punch in numbers all day until they get 1000 dollars. People without ATM cards will somehow have to open the card swipe door. etc
Long ago the industry decided: no card, no access. Its for the best.
You dont need to brute force this. Most people pick pins that are very easy to remember or make patterns on the keypad (down the middle, cross, etc) Raising the PIN to 8 characters wont help this. Hell, itll be their phone number + 1.-- lowbot, Feb 13 2007 Why the paranoia - are you American?-- nuclear hobo, Feb 13 2007 Uh... who here has not read the top ten list? Come on kine, raise your hand, and always remember that Ian and many Brititsh bakers were here before the place had even opened it's doors.-- blissmiss, Feb 13 2007 //before the place had even opened it's doors// - ah yes, those happy hours we spent, typing "www.halfbakery.com" into our IE2.0 and Mosaic browsers, waiting for Jutta to register the domain and write all the scripts and stuff... :)-- hippo, Feb 13 2007 Um, [blissmiss], this idea seems significantly different to 'Panic PIN'. Panic PIN secretly alerts the authorities in case you're being forced to hand over your cash to crooked scallywags. This idea allows you to get money from a cash machine in an emergency, when you have lost your card (or had it stolen).
Admittedly some of the possible flaws are similar.-- imaginality, Feb 13 2007 That's what the American Express card is for.. anyone remember those commercials from the 1970's and early 80's where this American couple is in a foreign country like Spain or Japan and then they run into the bank flustered telling the clerk, "We are on vacation and we lost ALL of our travelers checks!" And the clerk says inquizitively, "Well, what kind were they?" only for everyone to laugh with that elated sigh of relief when they say that they were American Express traveler's checks.
There were other commercials that followed where people would lose their wallet or someone at the airport would steal their luggage.. and somehow being a card member had its privilages in that situation.-- Jscotty, Feb 13 2007 >> Why the paranoia - are you American?
No, but I'm a seasoned backpacker.-- kinemojo, Feb 14 2007 random, halfbakery