Do you want to keep your finances safe in a bank account? Never put bad and easily detectable PIN codes on your payment cards!
In addition to smartphones and watches, many of us also use a payment card with a PIN code for financial transactions. It is made up of a numerical combination that should be strong enough to withstand today’s relatively common threat of cyber thieves, who can break it very easily. All savings can then disappear from your account within a few seconds. Which PINs should you definitely avoid and are they among the least secure?
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Source: Youtube
The issue was investigated by experts
A high percentage of payment card users use a PIN that is easy for them to remember. As a rule, this is a combination of numbers, which nowadays even a complete beginner hacker can easily detect. It is nothing difficult for him at all.
It only takes 61 attempts to crack a third of all possible codes. Experts in this field from the technology company Data Genetics have focused on creating a list of PINs that you need to avoid so that you don’t lose your savings unnecessarily.
Easily crackable PIN codes
The researchers analyzed 3.4 million PIN numbers. Each of the 10,000 combinations of numbers from 0000 to 9999 were represented in the data file. And do you know what they came up with? The result was really amazing! The simple combination 1234 occurred in more than 10% of all used and was therefore the most popular among users.
In second place was PIN 1111, which accounted for over 6%, followed by combinations 0000, 1212 and 7777. In 5th to 10th place appeared PIN codes: 1004, 2000, 4444, 2222 and 6969. All users of these combinations should completely certainly consider changing because they are exposed to a really high threat of attack. Hackers need minimal effort to break into your account.
Least used PIN codes
The study also looked at the least common PIN codes, which are almost never found in databases and offer a significantly higher level of security. Number one is 8068. Out of 3.4 million PINs, this is 0.000744%. This is far less than a random distribution would predict, and five orders of magnitude behind the most popular choice mentioned above.
However, due to the publication of this combination, be sure not to change the PIN to this four-digit number! Cyber thieves are definitely targeting her as well. The PIN 8557 came in second place, the combination 8438 took the third place, 9539 the fourth and 7063 the fifth. The following numbers followed in the top ten: 6827, 0859, 6793, 0738, 6835, 8093.
Secure PIN combination
In general, it is recommended to avoid frequently used numerical combinations, which are very easy to attack. In order to remember them better, you can use, for example, numbers that are in some way related to a person close to you, for example part of their date of birth, or to some important event for you. Likewise, be careful wherever you enter your PIN and make sure that no one can see what numbers you are dialing. It is best not to store them in phones and computers either.
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