In today’s world, logins and passwords are everywhere. Work, school, home, the bank – even your garage can have a pass code! In an effort to remember all of this information, what do we do? Choose simple, easily memorable login, password and PIN information that we use over and over. A recent study by DataGenetics shows staggering statistics on password predictability.
The scariest statistic discovered by the study of 3.4 million four digit, numeric passwords revealed that 26.83% of all passwords can be guessed by trying just 20 distinct combinations! There are 10,000 possible combinations that the digits 0-9 can be arranged to form a 4-digit pin code, yet nearly 30% of people choose some of the most easily guessed PINs!
Here are three simple steps to avoiding common mistakes when selecting your 4 digit debit card PIN and increasing your financial security:
The most popular password is 1234 … (10.71% of all PINs in data set). If this is your PIN – change it TODAY! Here is the full list of the 20 most frequently used PINs. If your number is on there, getting more creative will greatly decrease your changes of identity theft.
2) Patterns are nice, but not for your PIN
If your PIN makes a straight or diagonal path, a thief could be winning with your identity the same way you win at Bingo. Avoid these common key pad patterns! It’s also important to avoid repetition of numbers
(i.e. 1212, 1313, 4444) all of which are found on the top 20 list.
3) Being Odd is a good thing
Another interesting fact is that people seem to prefer even numbers over odd. For example, codes like 2468 occred higher than an odd number equivalent such as 1357. The one exception to this rule are PINs beginning with the odd number combination, “19xx”. Many of these high frequency codes can be interpreted as years (possibly birthdays or anniversaries). The study revealed that every single PIN beginning in “19xx” could be found in the top 20% of the database in term of frequency.