skimmers

He's writing for the skimmers, which happen to be some very large percentage of web users.

Most of the ATMs in Europe pull your card in by motorized mechanism and still skimmers are occasionally found on them.

It should at least make the immediate danger of these largely invisble skimmers go away.

Because an ATM has to be proof against many things, not just skimmers!

I designed those glowing green skimmers because they make inserting your card seem so much more inviting...

In fact, the skimmers could simply wreck them until the non-asshole proof version was brought back and then happily continue to ply their trade.

I assume it’s some sort of defense mechanism against skimmers, but I have no idea whether that’s actually the case.

(I mean, at first sight those weird protrusions seemed like skimmers to me because they definitely look like foreign objects.

I think the proper analogy, that authors of the proposal have missed, is not search & spam, it's ATM and skimmers.

Reminds me of the skimmers in Blindsight by Peter Watts.

You should see his writeups on ATM skimmers, fascinating stuff.

That does not deter skimmers in any measurable sense.

"One of the simplest ways to protect yourself from ATM skimmers is to cover the PIN pad when you enter your digits." As I understand the PIN is stored encrypted on the magnetic strip (salted with the account number) which allows it to be verified even when offline.

Skimmers improve, ATMs get better security.