If you are regular SBI ATM user, you must have noticed the ATM openly exposing your account balance to the public. This is OK if nobody is present in ATM, but in cities like Bangalore where crowd never dissolves, the uncontrolled balance display intimidates the user and opens up a lot of insecurities. This balance display is peeked by people who are in the queue and the situation is worse when there are parallel ATMs. I would say this was one of the worst designs in the financial world and being a software engineer this insecure feature is valued learning for me.
Earlier, the ATMs insecurely displayed account balance without user's consent.
Recently, I visited the nearby SBI ATM which always held "out of cash" placard. Fortunately, fresh notes were fed into the ATM and cash was available. When I finished the transaction, I noticed this prompt from ATM.
"Do you want to display account balance?". Finally, SBI learned from users that exposing account balance is insecure and updated the software. Now the user can control the balance display and most of the occasion, it would be a confident "No". Since the user receives SMS on transaction along with available balance, my opinion is to ditch this facility in near future. This software update is a welcome step by SBI and hopefully, every ATM is updated with the latest enhancement.
As of now not all ATMs have updated software. Considering that software update could be performed remotely, every SBI ATM should have the update available already. My suspicion is that the machines dispensing newly introduced notes only have this software. The legacy still carries older software.
Earlier, the ATMs insecurely displayed account balance without user's consent.
Recently, I visited the nearby SBI ATM which always held "out of cash" placard. Fortunately, fresh notes were fed into the ATM and cash was available. When I finished the transaction, I noticed this prompt from ATM.
"Do you want to display account balance?". Finally, SBI learned from users that exposing account balance is insecure and updated the software. Now the user can control the balance display and most of the occasion, it would be a confident "No". Since the user receives SMS on transaction along with available balance, my opinion is to ditch this facility in near future. This software update is a welcome step by SBI and hopefully, every ATM is updated with the latest enhancement.
As of now not all ATMs have updated software. Considering that software update could be performed remotely, every SBI ATM should have the update available already. My suspicion is that the machines dispensing newly introduced notes only have this software. The legacy still carries older software.
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