Use two fingers to put in your PIN

One actually presses, the other one doesn’t

You could generate an absurd amount of possible PINs that could work on your card, giving any PIN peepers a seriously hard time, should they somehow have the intent to get ahold of your card and PIN through spying and pickpocketing

Safes, doors, etc. same principle

Even better tip: commit your false finger movements to muscle memory so not even a recurring stalker can bypass it

This will be totally overboard, and totally unnecessary, most of the time. But like any kind of security, it’s good to have it even if you hopefully never need it

  • Ydna@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    7 days ago

    If somebody steals your card, wouldn’t they run the transaction as credit? They wouldn’t need your PIN.

    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      7 days ago

      this feels like a very american thing to me, everyone here has debit cards where you can at most get a couple hundred dollars per month from making purchases where you simply tap the card to pay, before it starts requiring you to enter the PIN

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      8 days ago

      My workmate used to do this 30 years ago.

      I started copying him - same funny fake password - when I moved on. Then I left that job after 8 years. I came back to that crew 10 years after that, to where most of them had moved en masse after a calamity, and my casual workmate from back then was doing it a decade later – same funny fake password. I laughed so hard.

  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    8 days ago

    My method is to put four fingers over the four digits, and keep them in place while moving all of them for each press.

    Assuming a four-digit code, your method generates 24=16 possibilities; mine generates 44=256.

  • krakloskewm@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    8 days ago

    Something that is potentially helpful for stuff like this:

    Every nuneric keypad ive eever seen is laid out in the same way and therr is usually a little bump over 5 which is the middle number.

    If you can orient yourself by touch with the bump then the numbers will always be in thr same place and you can use this trick and cover the pad with your hand to be extra discrete.

    Its really not hard. Like. Blind people can function in the world.

  • burido@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    8 days ago

    my pin is 12 digits, I could say it out loud and no one would still be able to get in

  • welfare_wizard@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    edit-2
    8 days ago

    You can do the same on a keyboard. Use your left hand to lightly tap the 1234 keys while actually typing out the characters with your right. Saved me when I had to sit next to some nosy kid once.

  • Victor@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    8 days ago

    Do people not use fingerprint? Doesn’t just make it harder, but eliminates the peeping aspect altogether.