What on earth are the protrusions and bulges on ATM machines? We have no idea. We do not know if required design or wonkish filagree, thus we do not discern if an ATM has been tampered with.
Criminals step in with ATM skimmers that easily blend into a cash machine’s hardware.
Kho Vinh is asking you, “Ask yourself: what exactly are all of those oddly proportioned boxes, varying planes, bizarre joins and strange angles that describe nearly every automated teller machine on the planet?
“Who among us who uses cash machines actually understands the purpose of all those expertly yet randomly fused-together shapes that are somehow intended to constitute a trustworthy money dispensing device?
“The fact of the matter is, the superfluously futuristic form of these machines is so nonsensical, so utterly impractical and useless that even a quickly grafted foreign appendage like a skimmer is indistinguishable from the native hardware.
“The thieves designing these ingenious tools have a much easier job of it because, like the ATMs onto which they’re attached, skimmers don’t have to look like anything you would understand, they just need to look like they might do something you don’t understand.”
Upcoming proposals for ATMs eliminate these easy opportunities to fool us.
h/t Douglas Bowman / StopDesign