credit card pin numbers

[carrie12]

my husband received an email stating that if you are held up at a ATM you can enter your pin number backwards ie if your number is 1234 enter it as 4321 and it will alert the police. The ATM still gives you the money to give to the people holding you up. I think this is rubbish but he thinks it works. Apparently it was on the news and it is true but little known. Has anyone tried this?

[Metz]

http://www.snopes.com/business/bank/pinalert.a sp

[carrie12]

Thank you. Most interesting link - of course if it worked would be a brilliant idea

[laurence2]

what if your pin is 1221?

[vehelpfulguy]

Ask you husband if he knows the word gullible has been removed from the dictionary :-)

[vehelpfulguy]

Considering you can use your PIN anywhere in the world, does it mean if you are UK based, and use the pin in the USA, the British police would come rushing over.

What some people believe eh.

[chazza]

It's rubbish and the third time I've read it on the site today

[rja211077]

in fairness then, having read the snopes article, it's not as far-fetched as it sounds at first.

but the best way of spotting an email hoax is when it ends in "pass this to everybody you know" or similar.

[Champagne]

I'm with rja on this. If an e-mail comes through which has been forwarded to all 'n sundry, with a note at the bottom telling me to forward to everyone I know and their mother, then it's binned straight away.

And anyway, what use would it be? The robber still gets your money and the police will take an hour to get to you. Even if they caught the villain on CCTV they probably wouldn't do nowt about it!

[Champagne]

Double negative there. Sorry. :o}

[Carby]

Your husband is a gullable old man!!

[carrie12]

I don't think he's gullible - if you read snopes you'll see it is a very good idea - I just knew it wasn't feasible!
The thing is everyone would be queuing up with their 'robber'/'friend in a hood' hand the cash over and pretend it was a robber and be reimbursed - what a easy way to make money. And as for the police - they wouldn't bother turning up.
....but just wanted to make sure!

[Zen]

Alert the Police ???????
No doubt they would send you a crime nunmber via the Atm screen....................

[prattler]

mind you, where money's concerned the police might come as quick as they do in the movies.fraud gets you a tougher jail sentence than GBH these days, or even murder! see if you kill someone with your car, or kill someone with a punch, in most cases,it's not 'premeditated'.you'll get a year or so.Try and defraud the taxman-well that's 'premeditated' you see.Here's five years to you!if you are getting assaulted, however, they might just wait till it's all cooled down....and arrive 2 hours later (if you're lucky)

[Lillabet]

It is a bit of an urban myth. If you did this in the uk the most likely outcome would be the machine swallowing your card and the person holding you up getting angry with you. So not a great plan there...
You're right - it doesn't work. I checked with my flatmate - a police officer - apparently they've been asked this a lot by people in the past few months to the extent that all officers in the county got sent an email to check they all new it was no more than a rumour