Cradle rocks PIN fraudsters

A device which magnifies PIN entry device (PED) keypads for visually impaired customers has proven effective at preventing criminals stealing PIN numbers by “shoulder surfing” or using cameras at cash points.

Its inventor, Neil Radford, an Enterprise Fellow at the University of Warwick, was inspired to research PED security during a previous job providing data communication infrastructure to the banking industry, where encryption was paramount. “I realised security was needed at the customer end from talking to a police office friend who was investigating fraud,” said Radford.

His research led him to look into accessibility for people with problems seeing the keypad. “At ATMs, banks were facing the challenge of producing bigger keypads for visually impaired customers but weighing that against the decreased security that would entail. Then chip and PIN came along and our research evolved into that arena. Around the same time, the criminal community developed ‘skimming', using cameras to record key presses or peering over customers’ shoulders. I engaged with a criminal psychologist to research that.”