An ATM Hack

No, not the criminal kind. Honest!

I was out with a friend yesterday who needed some cash. Being early birds, we arrived at her local bank branch before it opened, changing our plans, which required cash. Of course it has an ATM inside its first set of front doors. Just one teensy little bit of a problem, however.  She can't remember her 4 number pin. 

I shared our secret with her.

If she's like me, it wasn't all that hard the first time she set one up. But those darn security conscious banks are regularly asking you to change it. If you need to replace your card because somebody got a hold of your card number, again, change your pin for a new one as well. It never ends.

Numbers are particularly hard to come up with and remember. Nearly all the time, 4 numbers carry no meaning in themselves. I drew such a blank the first time I needed to come up with one about 40 years ago, I just plugged in 3-2-1-0. Hey, I was unique, wasn't I? I mean, everybody else goes 1-2-3-4. I wasn't everybody. I kept that pin for over a decade, and am only revealing its big secret now because I'd never do that again.

Steve uses a bank he's very loyal to, despite their well known abysmal record of security for their cardholders' information, among other things. It's the one reason I never would give them a credit card number when I tried to cash a check there, even one written on the bank, and required because I wasn't a customer myself. I couldn't even endorse a check over to Steve to deposit without that. They mailed it back!

We came up with a work-around for that, solving my problem without risking my security. But Steve continually has a problem with his card number illicitly being used, requiring him to get a whole new card from the bank. (That was way more than inconvenient when we'd just moved and mail deliveries weren't. Delivered, that is.) If I can count correctly, he's had ten cards replaced since we've been living together. I may be underestimating. He usually has me drive to the ATM for him and plug in his code when he withdraws cash, a royal literal pain with my short car and arthritic shoulders. Those things are designed for those tall monster fuel hogs. But each time he has to change it, I get his new code to punch in. 

He shared his secret with me for remembering all those new pins. They aren't numbers. They're four letter words! Just look at your phone pad and translate them back to the number each letter sits on. "J" is a 5, for example, if your word has a "J" in it. It's easy for both of us to remember the words. Some times they are actually what are colloquially referred to as four-letter-words. It might just depend on how annoyed either of us were - because yes, I do that now too - when the need for a new pin number came up. Go ahead, use those anyway if it helps. The machine isn't going to know what, say, 7448 translates back to.

I bet you can figure it out, eh?

I bet you won't forget it either. Go ahead, neither of us is currently using it.