Friday, November 30, 2007

My Christmas Present to You

Oh wow! It's a PIN number - 3183. Go ahead! Shop! Go nuts! Actually it's not been my PIN number since yesterday morning. On Wednesday night I had dinner at Kensington Place. The waitress brought the strange, shoe-like thing for me to day. I tapped in 3183. Then a man came over. He apologised the waitress had put in the wrong sum. He ran off a bill for the remainder and I put in my PIN again. Leaving the restaurant, I noticed the amount of the first bill - £31.83, my PIN number. I'm sure this was a mistake - she had just given me the shoe when the money, not the PIN, should have been put it - but the next morning I ran down to the cash machine and changed the PIN on all my cards. Technology makes you dependent and then shows you the abyss.

4 comments:

  1. Bryan, how foolish you are!

    3/1/83. The first rule of choosing a pin number is not to use your birthday...

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  2. Never type your PIN into something resembling a shoe; always ask for the PDQ machine.

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  3. Was your daughter born 3 January 1983? I'm with Richard that you've probably plugged in a pin pretty easy for the i.d. thieves to decode anyway.

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  4. i've not worked in a bank for 2 years but it's probably best not to advertise even past PINs since your birth date is i think available on your wikipedia entry. It's surprising how easy it is to get into someone else's account if you know just a few scraps of data.

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