This is why I don’t carry cash and do most of my banking on-line: five branches of the First National Bank in Chicago have just banned cell phone usage in the lobby due to security reasons. FNB is following in the footsteps of Mexico City and Munster, Indiana banks that have previously banned mobiles. According to an SVP at FNB, the goal is to make it more difficult for would-be robbers to communicate both within and outside of the bank.

I’ll assume that none of these banks have free WiFi, because Sony’s new mylo would be perfect for the potential bad-guys. [Hey, it just me or does EVERY city have a "First" National Bank? Which one really was the first? ] On a serious note, this same security concept could be applied to pagers and other text messaging devices. On a not so serious note: FNB has yet to ban semaphore flags so if you see a bank customer with two handheld signaling flags, we recommend leaving the bank immediately.

-kct