I know I know! PIN number actually translates to 'personal identification number number'. But you learn to live with some anomalies in life.
That said what's your PIN number? For what you say? For anything. Is it 1234? If it is you and 10% of all the PIN holding people have the same PIN. I found an article that checked a dataset of 3.4 million PIN's and 10% of them were 1234.
What were the top 20 PIN's? Here's a list...
If your PIN is on this list, change it.
And then there are the longer than 4 digit codes. There are favorites on this list also.
click it to big it
Lots of info in the article for the data lovers out there. Charts and graphs galore.
From the ARTICLE...
Some interesting observations (and a little speculation)
For five digit passwords, users appear to have even less imagination in selecting their codes (22.8% select 12345). All the usual suspects occur, but a new addition is the puerile addition in position #20 of the concatenation of 420 and 69.
For six digit password, again 696969 appears highly. Also of note is 159753 (a "X" mark over the numeric keypad). James Bond returns with 007007.
For seven digits, the standby of 1234567 is a much lower frequency (though still the top). I speculate that this is because many people may be using their telephone number (without area code) as a seven digit password. Telephone numbers are fairly distinct, and already memorized, so when a seven digit code is needed, they spring to mind easily. The higher frequency of usage of telephone numbers reduces the need to use imagination (or lack thereof) and select something else.
Is Jenny there? The fourth most popular seven digit password is 8675309 (It's a popular 80's song).
Eight digit passwords are just as expected. Lots of pattern, and lots of repetition.
Common nine digit passwords also follow patterns and repetition. 789456123 appears as an easy "Along the top, middle and bottom of the keypad" 147258369 is related in the vertical direction (and other variants appear high up). Again we get a 420 moment with 420420420, and also the shaken, not stirred, but repeated 007007007 returns.
Interestingly for ten digits 1029384756 appears (alternating ascending/descending digits), as well as the odd/even 1357924680.
Hurrah for math! In position #17 of the ten digit password list we get 3141592654 (The first few digits of Pi)
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4 comments:
This is fascinating! And also helpful as well! Thank you!
I once used a pin number like that!
The thing that I find most interesting is that somebody would take the time and effort to accumulate the data to make this information available to all of us!
A neat and very useful read!
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