What's your ATM PIN Code?

Cracking Your PIN Code: Easy as 1-2-3-4
Excerpt:

What he found, he says, was a "staggering lack of imagination" when it comes to selecting passwords. Nearly 11% of the 3.4 million four-digit passwords he analyzed are 1234. The second most popular PIN in is 1111 (6% of passwords), followed by 0000 (2%).

... Berry says that a whopping 26.83% of all passwords could be guessed by attempting just 20 combinations of four-digit numbers (see first table). "It's amazing how predictable people are," he says.

... Many of the commonly used passwords are, of course, dates: birthdays, anniversaries, the year you were born, etc. Indeed, using a year, starting with 19__ helps people remember their code, but it also increases its predictability, Berry says. His analysis shows that every single 19__ combination be found in the top 20% of the dataset. "People use years, date of birth — it's a monumentally stupid thing to do because if you lose your wallet, your driver's license is in there. If someone finds it, they've got the date of birth on there. At least use a parent's date of birth [as a password]," says Berry.

... Somewhat intriguing was #22 on the most common password list: 2580. It seems random, but if you look at a telephone keypad (or ATM keypad) you'll see those numbers are straight down the middle — yet another sign we're uncreative and lazy password makers.

... The least-used PIN is 8068, Berry found, with just 25 occurrences in the 3.4 million set, which equates to 0.000744%.

Comment: Truth be told ... I've never changed my ATM pin. Once I had a Sr moment and forgot it.

George's PIN Code