14 DAY TRIAL // Personal identification numbers (PINs) are just as important as passwords and many security experts have highlighted throughout the years the safest ways to set such a secret passcode. The folks from Data Genetics have analyzed PINs and they have come up with some interesting results.
Although professionals often advise users never to set PINs such as “1111” or “1234,” there are still a large number of individuals who disregard the precious advice and choose weak combinations because they’re easy to remember.
After analyzing 3.4 million 4-digit passwords, experts have concluded that the most popular one is “1234.” So there are no surprises here.
But which one is the least popular of them all? As it turns out, it’s “8068,” with only 25 occurrences in 3.4 million.
Don’t rush to set your PIN to “8068” just yet. Now that the information is out there, crooks who want to abuse your credit card might try it right after they attempt to access your account by utilizing “1234.”
“1234” is the most popular and “8068” is the least popular, but let’s take a look at what’s in-between. Other popular combinations are the ones represented like patterns such as “1122”, “1313”, or “4321.”
Curiously, “2580” is also a password preferred by many. You’re probably wondering what’s so special about it. Well, it’s made of the keys from the middle column of a telephone keypad.
The study reveals that many people use their years of birth (or ones with a particular significance) as a PIN, making passwords that start with “19” highly common. Of course, experts highly recommend against such passcodes since they’re the first that will be tried out by a thief or a clever social engineer.
So what is the safest PIN? The answer is: a completely random one. Even though there is no such thing as unbreakable code, most security systems allow users to enter them only a limited number of times and if it’s not “1234”, “1111”, or the year when you were born, the chances for it to be guessed decrease considerably.
By the way, did you hear that a hacker managed to leak all the PINs in the world last week?