Featured Image Credit: Getty Stock Images
Topics: Technology, Crime
Emily Brown
A list of the most common four-digit pin numbers has been revealed and if you spot yours, you might want to think about changing it as soon as possible.
Coming up with a good PIN can be tough. You need it to be memorable, but you're not allowed to write it down anywhere. Unlike a password, you can't throw in some punctuation or rogue capitals to mix things up - you're limited to just 10 digits.
With that in mind, it's easy to want to resort to something like your birthday, but could that just put you more at risk?
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In an increasingly digital world, I imagine most of us know the answer to this question, but it's easy to forget just how much is protected by four numbers.
We're not only talking about bank accounts, but also phones, safes, and maybe even a lock box holding the spare key to your house.
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If your PIN is common enough for someone to guess, it's a prime target for a hacker or thief, so it's important to think outside the box when choosing your digits.
Nick Berry of DataGenetics analyzed data to calculate not only the most common PIN in existence, but a whole list of the top ten which follow patterns that you should avoid to remain secure.
Any guesses at number one? Well, if you need four numbers, what's the easiest solution? That's right, it's 1234.
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This sequence clearly follows the pattern of numerical order, but there's another common mistake that people make when trying to avoid that simple pattern
Beyond the number one PIN of 1234, it's codes using repetition that seem to be a favorite. PINs like 7777, 1111, or 0000 are frequent and easily guessable by a potential hacker or thief.
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The list of the most common PINs are as follows:
I heard that chuckle at number 10!
Though a PIN like a birthday is more difficult for a stranger to guess, it could put you at risk if a hacker or thief manages to work it out. Birth years should also be avoided, with 2000 making the top 10 list of frequent codes and 2001 making it into the top 20.
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According to Berry, the top 20 most common PINs made up roughly 26.83 percent of the total 3.4 million PINs that were used for his analysis.
When it comes to the least used PIN, 8068 takes the cake in this study, as it was only seen 25 times across the 3.4 million PINs. Furthermore, the 20 least common PINs, unsurprisingly, have few distinguishable patterns among them outside of the fact that none of them begin with the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5.
The least common PINs are:
That being said, Berry noted that 'hackers can read too!', so be wary of picking blindly from his list!