Bank Insecurities: DO NOT TYPE YOUR BANK CARD PIN INTO A PHONE. EVER.

 (Photo credit: fables98)

Banks. They annoy me. A lot.

Do I need to write more? Do I need to justify myself?
Probably not. Unless you work for a bank, or own one, then you probably agree with me.

My annoyance is significant, specific and stewing in my brain. So I'm going to vent. Normally I'd type a blog like this and save it as draft, so that I can delete it later. This time though, I think I have to share if just to make sure that you DO NOT TYPE YOUR BANK CARD PIN INTO A PHONE. EVER.

The Chase Bank has allowed unknown people in Texas to empty our checking account twice so far. Last week they called me to say there had been suspicious activity on my account again and so they'd locked me out of online banking until they could clear it up. Then they requested I type my pin number into my phone to verify who I was.  I wouldn't do this and so I was threatened that I'd have to physically go to a Chase branch. I then told each of the 5 people I was passed around, the reasons why I WILL NOT TYPE MY BANK CARD PIN INTO A PHONE. EVER.

I've been asked to do this before and I've always refused. Why would I want to broadcast my pin number to AT&T or T-Mobile or any of the phone call carriers who are routing my call? Also I work at home, but if I were to do this from an office phone you can be sure that my pin would also be stored on the office switchboard database too. And for what it's worth, the metadata that the NSA was accessing and was the subject of so much controversy is this very data; the numbers you type into your phone.

Now let's face it, if the NSA has been legally-ish obtaining this data, there will also be a significant number of organizations and individuals with more clearly dubious motives illegally gathering this data too.  Telephone exchanges are really just computers now and use the same technologies that the internet does..... So I guess we shouldn't be too worried. It's not as if there are foreign governments and criminal organizations on the internet constantly trying to hack in and steal data... [I can't remember, which is the emoticon for sarcasm?]

In fact if you want to go low tech too, it's fairly easy to attach a call logger to landline telephone wires and just wait for a 16 digit number followed by the '#' and then the 4 digit pin followed by '#'.

I've complained to the Chase Bank Fraud Hotline... blah blah blah.... Actually my personal bank battles will probably never end and are not that important in the big scheme of life. So all I ask that you just take one piece of infomation from this blog post:

DO NOT TYPE YOUR BANK CARD PIN INTO A PHONE. EVER.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/27/heres-how-phone-metadata-can-reveal-your-affairs-abortions-and-other-secrets/?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost