Rant: The stupidity of modern ATM keypads

[mr_a500]

Has anybody noticed the utter crap stiff feel of most ATM/Interac keypads these days? You can't quickly type your PIN like you used to be able to do. The keys now are so stiff, you have to slowly and firmly press each key. If you try to type quickly, keypresses don't register. Don't the banks realize how utterly stupid that is? Even a cross-eyed moron halfway down the street can see what keys you pressed. No wonder there are so many stories these days about thieves stealing PIN numbers.

ATM keypads, when they first came out, used to be like a quality industrial version of a keyboard numeric keypad. I used to cover the keypad with one hand and type my PIN super-fast with the other. Now, it's just "press"..."press"..."press"..."press"....... wait........ ****ing thing still didn't register............ wait..................... "press!"............ "press!"............ "press!".......... "press!". (...and even the granny with thick glasses over on aisle 3 saw my PIN!)

(Yeah, it's been like that for around 10 years now, but it still pisses me off. I thought a keyboard forum was a good place to rant about it.)

[hyperlinked]

The ones my bank have are made by Diebold and they look like they're made to survive nuclear fallout. That said, they don't seem to be that hard to press, though if I wanted to press them very fast, it might pose problems.

I always fein a few extra presses anyway or keep several fingers in contact with keys while I push them. I started doing this after I had a friend actually get victimized by the ATM camera ploy:
http://www.snopes.com/fraud/atm/atmcamera.asp

In this ploy to steal your ATM card, thieves either install either a duplicate card reader on top of the ATM's card reader or they install something so that you can't get your card back and they use a wireless camera to watch you press your pin. To make a long story short, they end up with your card or a copy of your card, but they still need your PIN and they can only get that by watching your hand motions.

[kishy]

Locally, this is a common one, made by Ingenico:



Despite all of them being virtually brand new, they have great buttons.

I find the older ones are quite frustrating sometimes. There's one (not sure of brand) which has HUGE buttons which is also a pleasure to use like the Ingenico, but it's not terribly common.

Overall the only ones I dislike are the oldest ones still in use.

And WHY hasn't chip been adopted universally yet? FFS, get your act together retailers...