[Wolves] credit card signatures etc

[sparkes]

On Tue, 2004-04-06 at 16:40, Andy Hill wrote:
>         Hi,
>         
>         What about the serial numbers on the bank notes that you
>         withdraw from the cash point? They are all logged and from
>         that number you can be told which cashpoint, time of
>         withdrawl, etc.
>         
I doubt this is the case.

The time and effort involved in logging who got which numbers would far
outweigh the benefits to the bank.

Take the new 20 pound note.  It has two sets of serials the one on the
edge would be machine readable but not all notes have the serial on the
edge, so machine reading inside the machine would take too much effort
and time only for the bank of england to change the notes and you to
need a new scanner in every machine.

When you go to the bank and have money over the counter they take it out
of the drawer (in no particular order) and hand it over with no
knowledge of who got which note.  I think the atm machine would work in
the same way.  The central computers know you had so much money out of
that cash machine at that time, they wouldn't bother with serials. 
Banks might not even log what serials are going into the machine when it
is refilled unless they track every note currently in their posession
(not very likely). 

When large amounts of a single denomination are being moved I would
think they log the serials by computer vision (the ink might even be
magnetic on some notes) but I don't think an individual bank would have
any idea of the numbers of all the notes on the premises.  They
certainly don't log them when you make a deposit.

If they did we would know about it.  It would have been used as evidence
in a trial, and then be in the papers and finally a story on the bill. 
Circumstancial evidence mounts up and it would have been used as
supporting evidence at some time.

sparkes