Pin Number Reversal E-mail

I've gotten this e-mail a few times in the past week:

" PIN NUMBER REVERSAL (GOOD TO KNOW)
If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM machine, you can notify the police by entering your Pin # in reverse. For example if your pin number is 1234 then you would put in4321. The ATM recognizes that your pin number is backwards from the ATM card you placed in the machine.The machine will still give you the money you requested, but unknown to the robber, the police will be immediately dispatched to help you.This information was recently broadcast on CTV and it states that it is seldom used, because people don't know it exists.

Please pass this along to everyone."

I checked on Snopes.com and just so everyone knows... IT'S FALSE!!

"PINned Hopes
Claim: Entering one's PIN in reverse at any ATM will summon the police.
Status: False.
Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2006]

Origins: This seemingly helpful heads-up began circulating on the Internet in September 2006. However, "seemingly" is the best that can be said of it at this point, in that entering one's Personal Identification Number (PIN) in reverse at Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) does not summon the police.

Such a system was first imagined in 1994 and patented in 1998 by Joseph Zingher, a Chicago businessman. His SafetyPIN System would alert police that a crime was in progress when a cardholder at an ATM keyed in the reverse of his personal identification numbers. The flip-flopped PIN would serve as a "panic code" that sent a silent alarm to police to notify them that an ATM customer was acting under duress. Because palindromic PINs (e.g., 2002, 7337, 4884) cannot be reversed, Zingher's system included work-arounds for such numeric combinations.

However, Zingher has had little success in interesting the banking community in SafetyPIN despite his pitching it to them with great persistence over the years. He did in 2004 succeed in getting the Illinois General Assembly to adopt a "reverse PIN" clause in SB 562, but the final version of the bill watered down the wording so as to make banks' implementation of the system optional rather than mandatory: "A terminal operated in this State may be designed and programmed so that when a consumer enters his or her personal identification number in reverse order, the terminal automatically sends an alarm to the local law enforcement agency having jurisdiction over the terminal location."

No one in the banking industry seems to want the technology. The banks argue against its implementation, not only on the basis of cost but also because they doubt such an alert would help anyone being coerced into making an ATM withdrawal. Even if police could be summoned via the keying of a special "alert" or "panic" code, they would likely arrive long after victim and captor had departed. There is also the very real possibility that victims' fumbling around while trying to trigger silent alarms could cause their captors to realize something was up and take those realizations out on their captives. Finally, there is the problem of quickly conjuring up the accustomed PIN in reverse. Even in situations lacking added stress, mentally reconstructing one's PIN backwards is a difficult task for many people. Add to that difficulty the terror of being in the possession of a violent and armed person, and precious few victims might be able to come up with reversed PINs seamlessly enough to fool their captors into believing that everything was proceeding according to plan. As Chuck Stones of the Kansas Bankers Association said in 2004: "I'm not sure anyone here could remember their PIN numbers backward with a gun to their head.""

http://www.snopes.com/business/bank/pinalert.asp