10,000 options, yet most of us use the same 20 PIN numbers
DENVER, Colo. – We use pin codes all the time to get money from ATM’s. Thieves wouldn’t have that tough of a time cracking your PIN code, because we’re pretty bad at generating random passwords.
These four random numbers protect your money and credit from thieves. Data scientist Nick Berry says while there are roughly 10,000 possible PIN combinations using numbers 0-9, more than a quarter of us use just 20 combinations. He looked at nearly 3.5 million PIN’s exposed through security breaches. The most popular:
-1234
-1111
-0000
-1212
-7777
Web security experts say the study shows humans are not random number generators. Alexander Groth of Fusionbox says the key is to not repeat the numbers, or any patterns with them. That being said, stay away from birthdays, anniversaries or anything with significance that someone can figure out.
Security experts say you also want to change your pin number pretty frequently. The least used PIN number is 8068. It was used just 25 times out of the 3.5 million PIN’s breached.