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London school exhibits designs to deter ATM crime

Last year, cardholders withdrew £185.7 billion (U.S. $3 billion) from the nation's ATMs. Most of the withdrawals occurred without incident, but ATM crimes, including card skimming, also cost consumers £33.2 million (U.S. $53.7 million) in 2010. The school's design students were challenged to come up with innovative and cost-effective solutions to tackle ATM crime.

June 14, 2011

A woman types in her PIN to withdraw from a through-the-wall ATM on a London street. As she concentrates on what she is doing, she doesn't notice that a man behind her is standing much too close, close enough to memorize her four-digit PIN. Memorizing another person's PIN is normally the first step in a thief securing card data in order to steal funds from an individual's bank accounts. 

Judyta Wojciechowska, a student at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, may have a solution to uninvited individuals who invade ATM users' private space. Wojciechowska has designed what she calls an ATM Magic Carpet that would alert the deep-in-concentration cardholder that the person standing behind her in line needs to step back.

Magic Carpet is a decorative sidewalk or floor cover that directs ATM users where to stand in order to maintain their privacy. The Magic Carpet also provides visual guidance on the footway for the desired direction of the ATM line and the distance cardholders waiting in line should stand away from the ATM. And if another cardholder, deliberately or inadvertently, invades the ATM user's space, Magic Carpet sounds an alarm.

Wojciechowska' Magic Carpet is one of several products that will be on display beginning Thursday in the Design Against ATM Crime exhibition at Central Saint Martins College.
 
NCR Corp.,the world's largest ATM manufacturer based on annual shipments, LINK, the U.K.'s ATM network, and Royal Bank of Scotland, which manages the U.K.'s largest ATM network of around 9,000 machines, and the Design Against Crime Research Centre put together the exhibition, which ends June 21.

The organizations and their clients are concerned about crime at ATMs. Last year, cardholders withdrew £185.7 billion (U.S. $300.5 billion) from the nation's ATMs. Most of the withdrawals occurred without incident, but ATM crimes, including card skimming, also cost consumers £33.2 million (U.S. $53.7 million) in 2010. The school's design students were challenged to come up with innovative and cost-effective solutions to tackle ATM crime.

Baroness Angela Browning, U.K. minister for Crime Prevention and Antisocial Behaviour Reduction, said design has a huge potential to prevent ATM crime and reduce the devastating effects it can cause.

"The creative ideas generated in response to the ATM design brief are an excellent example of how innovative thinking can be catalyzed when partners from the private sector, policing and academia work together. This is the kind of collaborative working that I am keen to see much more of," the Baroness said.

Some of the other designs include ATM Ball Mirrors, which are attached to both sides of the ATM or the ATM surround. The ball mirrors' design, which was submitted by Saturu Kusakabe, gives the ATM user a clear view of the person who is standing behind him.

Another design is called Shield And Flow-ATM Protection, which divides the footpath into two areas. The design, submitted by Jeanette Petrik, encourages passersby to walk between the ATM and people queued to use the machine. The second part of the design, involving a metal frame affixed with LEDs (light-emitting diodes), is located to the left of the ATM. The frame illuminates the wall around the ATM, obscuring the keypad from passersby.

This summer, the Design Against Crime Research Centre and Royal Bank of Scotland will test the ATM designs on the streets of Camden and Westminster to evaluate whether safety zones can really reduce crime by raising ATM users' awareness. Previous trials in Manchester and Hammersmith suggest that redefining the space around ATMs helps reduce shoulder surfing, remote surveillance, ATM fraud and pick pocketing.