In the current digital age, your PIN is one of the most essential pieces of information, as it grants you access to your bank account for immediate cash withdrawals or deposits.
Unfortunately, for hackers and thieves, discovering an individual’s PIN is one of the simplest methods to steal money. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure your PIN is unique and hard to guess.
Despite the risks, some individuals opt for convenience and use simple combinations for their PINs, not realizing the dangers involved.
Doing so inevitably increases their vulnerability to theft.
Beyond just banking, PINs are used to secure devices like phones, safes, and lockers. If your PIN is easily guessed, these items are also at risk of being compromised.
Recently, Nick Berry from DataGenetics conducted a data analysis to identify the most common PINs, emphasizing patterns to avoid if you want to keep your information secure.
The most frequent PIN is 1234, following a straightforward numerical sequence. Similarly, repeated numbers such as 7777, 1111, or 0000 are popular and easily guessed by criminals.
Patterns based on personal information, like birthdates, pose a lower risk but should still be avoided, especially if someone knows your birthday. Birth years, such as 2000 and 2001, also rank high on the list of common PINs.
Berry’s analysis found that the top 20 most commonly used PINs constituted about 26.83% of the 3.4 million PINs analyzed.
The least common PIN discovered was 8068, appearing only 25 times in the study. The 20 least used PINs shared the trait of not starting with 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5.
While it is beneficial to know which PINs are commonly used, Berry advised against opting for the least common ones, including 8068.
“Hackers can read too!” Berry reminded. “They will also be promoting 8068 up their attempt trees in order to catch people who read this (or similar) articles.”