Ten per cent still using 1234 as their PIN, with one in ten PINs guessed correctly first time
Following the news that one in 10 have managed to guess a colleague's password, DataGenetics research from more than 3.4 million PIN codes has found one in 10 can be guessed first time with 1234 still being used by 10 per cent of us.
1111 and 0000 were found to be the second and third most popular PIN codes. One in 10 were so obvious criminals needed just one attempt to guess correctly, with more than a quarter used so often they can be guessed in fewer than 20 attempts.
Using data from previously released password tables and security breaches, DataGenetics combined the password databases filtering the results to show just four-digit numbers and were able to analyse 3.4 million PINs.
Of the 10,000 possible combinations almost 11 per cent of the 3.4 million passwords were 1234. Six per cent were found to be using 1111, and two per cent used 0000.
Many people are believed to be using their year of birth as their PIN, which can be easily determined from their age, as so many begin with 19, for example 1986, 1957, 1962, etc. As well as year of birth these numbers could also relate to an anniversary or a significant year which a hacker could obtain through online accounts.
Every single 19+ combination appeared in the top fifth of the list.
"Statistically, with 10,000 possible combinations, if passwords were uniformly randomly distributed, we would expect these twenty passwords to account for just 0.2 per cent of the total, not the 26.83 per cent encountered," commented DataGenetics.