How Thieves Get Your PIN So Easily

When you consider how many cybercriminals are able to force their way into people's bank accounts, you might be impressed with how easy it is to guess someone's PIN (personal identification number). It's a factor of a what PIN people choose, and too many people select one that is easy to remember and therefore simple to guess. There are 10,000 four-digit number combinations, but about 10% of all PINs are 1234. That would be a thieve's first guess.  

The grid above has a square for all 10,000 possible 4-digit numbers. The brighter ones are the most popular PINs for a reason. The diagonal line from the bottom left to the upper right are the PINs that use repeated digits. But what explains the brighter green rectangle on the bottom left? And why is there a bright green line going across? Those popular numbers are also the first to be tried. Find out why your PIN number is too easy to guess and how you can come up with a better one by reading this.  -via Damn Interesting


Comments (2)

Newest 2
Newest 2 Comments

Even online accounts with no sensitive data stored these days heavily prefer multifactor authentication and have password standards.

actual banks though... "four digits good, we'll use the same digits for online login"(my bank does for example, secure! They do then sms authenticate adding new payees online, but that's hardly a complete solution)
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