Louis Doré
indy100
If your PIN is 1234, you really, really, need to change it.
It's financial security 101. You don't give yourself the most common PIN in existence.
How do we know this?
Well, password databases have been hacked and leaked for decades.
The released password tables then provide a database from which people can study the most common traits of passwords, in order to combat cybertheft.
That's exactly what Nick Berry, now a data scientist at Facebook, found when he analysed a numerical password database.
The most popular four-digit numerical passwords were 1234 and 1111.
The 15 least popular pins (ranked most used, to least) were as follows:
7063, 0.001131 per cent
6093, 0.001131 per cent
6827, 0.001101 per cent
7394, 0.001101 per cent
0859, 0.001072 per cent
8957, 0.001042 per cent
9480, 0.001042 per cent
6793, 0.001012 per cent
8398, 0.000982 per cent
0738, 0.000982 per cent
7637, 0.000953 per cent
6835, 0.000953 per cent
9629, 0.000953 per cent
8093, 0.000893 per cent
8068, 0.000744 per cent
Also, now that you've read 8068 was historically the least used PIN, don't change your pin to this. Or indeed any other on the list. It's a bad idea.