Bank users may be making it too easy for criminals to access their money.
A study conducted by DataGenetics found that the most commonly used 4-digit PIN number is still 1234, closely followed by 1111 and 0000. The research also showed that 10% of the 3.4 million codes analyzed would take a criminal only one try to crack it. Over 25% could be guessed in less than 20 attempts.
Many users were found to have PIN numbers beginning in 19 which suggests that many people use birth years and anniversaries to secure their accounts, numbers that can be easily attained by searching the internet. It was found that a startling 11% of the 3.4 million PINs consisted of ‘1234.’ The next most commonly used PIN was 1111 at 6%, followed by 0000 at 2%. The least used code was found to be 8068, with only 25 occurrences.
Below is a list of the top 10 most common PINs.
- 1234
- 1111
- 0000
- 1212
- 7777
- 1004
- 2000
- 4444
- 2222
- 6969
Original article by Victoria Woollaston.
Read the full story here.