PIN Code Of The Week

It is a test of both ingenuity and memory, the selection of a four-digit PIN code which is strong enough to baffle the least sophisticated of scammers and yet one that can easily be brought to mind in the panic of trying to access some vital app.

An anti-breach website has helpfully analysed more than 29 million four-digit PIN codes to reveal the most popular selections. Perhaps unsurprisingly but a tad worryingly, the most frequent selection “by a huge margin” is 1234 which is used by 9% of the people whose PINs were analysed. The second most popular is 1111, used by 1.6% followed by 0000 (1.1%).

Other favourites include years, with 1986 currently the most popular, or some combination of days and months such as 2512. Others have tried to be clever by scrambling 1234 into 1342, “so many, in fact”, the survey says, “that it is the fourth most popular code of all”.

Room for improvement, methinks.