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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!jmlang
From: jmlang@water.UUCP
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Forgetting to retrieve the card
Message-ID: <962@water.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 25-May-87 10:45:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: water.962
Posted: Mon May 25 10:45:02 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 26-May-87 02:47:33 EDT
References: <334@umnstat.UUCP>
Reply-To: jmlang@water.UUCP (Jerome M Lang)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 35
Keywords: ATM , security , Aunt Gertrude

In article <334@umnstat.UUCP> weiss@umnstat.UUCP (Robert Weiss) writes:
>One last complaint:  (This belongs somewhere else, sorry)  When I stand
>up straight at most ATM's, I can't see the slot where the card comes
>out.  Thus, it is moderately easy to lose the card through
>forgetfulness.  I'm only 6 feet tall.  Now as I get older, I'll get 
>shorter, so this problem should go away... assuming senility doesn't set in.  

Since most of the time, ATM's are used to withdraw money, there is
a simple solution. At the Bank of Montreal ATM's, you have to 
retrieve the card out of the slot before the ATM gives you the requested
money. If you want to do other transactions, it is best to
keep the cash withdrawal to be the last one since pulling out the
card closes the session.

A little safety feature, (and to justify this message in this newsgroup),
pulling the card out, except when the machines tells you to do so,
is equivalent to an abort. During cash withdrawals, for instance, 
if you pull the card during the "thinking" stage  where it is determined
if you have a money, then the transcript comes out with 
"session aborted", and closes the session.

I recently used my card at an interact machine, (that allows you
to do transactions like withdrawals from your account, but using
another banks machine). The thing is that my banks computers
were down. The interact machine started the transaction, asked me
for the PIN number, and told me that it could not complete the
transaction after I had entered 2 out of 4 digits. Problems:
the ATM had started accepting the PIN BEFORE it was determined
that my bank was not communicating AND the error message was
unable to complete transaction, NO REASON GIVEN. 

-- 
Je'ro^me M. Lang	   ||    jmlang@water.bitnet        jmlang@water.uucp
Dept of Applied Math       ||			  jmlang%water@waterloo.csnet
U of Waterloo		   ||  	 jmlang%water%waterloo.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa