7 ms·
Almost one in 10 people use the same four-digit PIN
- underseacables 2y agoI mixed it up though and did 4-3-2-1
- ksenzee 2y agothe 18th most popular code, good choice
- transcriptase 2y agoCould be! We just need to know the median number of tries a system allows before locking you out.
- loganc2342 2y agoAn assailant who doesn’t have access to this dataset may assume 4321 is more common than 18th, as I would’ve, and try it sooner. Not a great choice in that case.
- billpg 2y agoThen it isn't a personal identification number. We should call them PANs, or Personal Authentication Number. If you'll excuse me, I need to go fight some windmills.
- amelius 2y agoIt identifies your authentication number ;)
- lyntier 2y agoSo a Personal Authentication Identification Number? I like that.
- adolph 2y agoP43r, a space-included numeronym[0] pronounced like Paer? Or just the straight acronym of PAIN? 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeronym https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeronym printf "\n%s\t%s\n\n" $(uname) $SHELL; wrd="$(pbpaste | tr -d '\n')"; printf "%s%s%s\n" "$(echo "$wrd" | sed 's;^\(.\).*$;\1;')" "$(expr $(pbpaste | wc -m | tr -d ' ') - 2)" "$(echo "$wrd" | sed 's;^.*\(.\)$;\1;')" Darwin /bin/zsh P43r
- Freak_NL 2y agoSo can we call it a 'PAN number'?
- dfxm12 2y agoOnly if we use it to access the ATM machine.
- gweinberg 2y agoIf you want to be pedantic, it really isn't a number at all, it's a string of digits. A lot of "serial numbers" and "material part numbers" are not only not numbers, they're not even all digits.
- craftkiller 2y agoIf we're being pedantic then they ARE numbers, even the ones with letters. They're just not in base10.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y agoYeh, until your coworker thinks that he should be storing the phone numbers as an int in the database, and the ones in the Pacific northwest keep getting truncated (but only if they include the leading 1). Numbers might be represented by numerals, but that doesn't mean every string of numerals is a number. If you need to know the difference, ask yourself if you'd ever do math with it, (add to it, subtract from it) if only principle.
- craftkiller 2y agoUgh, for anyone reading this, please store your phone numbers as E164. There is no need to re-invent the wheel.
- amelius 2y agonumber (noun): - a figure or group of figures used to identify someone or something (Oxford dictionary) - a numeral or combination of numerals or other symbols used to identify or designate (Merriam Webster's dictionary)
- Vaslo 2y agoThis is the same combination I have on my luggage.
- cozzyd 2y agoMy luggage is more secure, it has a 5 at the end.
- ramesh31 2y agoThe pin isn't the security, your physical card is. Pins are usernames, cards are passwords.
- ceejayoz 2y agoMy bank has more than 10k customers, despite four digit PINs.
- kstrauser 2y agoI think that’s exactly opposite. The card is the unique identifier assigned by the bank. We could all share the same PIN.
- ramesh31 2y ago>The card is the unique identifier assigned by the bank. The account number is the unique identifier assigned by the bank. Your card is the physical "key" (password) to said account, and the PIN is your self chosen identifier (username). Think of it this way: I can tell you my pin number and my bank account number all day long, it doesn't matter if you don't have my card. But if you had my card, you'd have a reasonable shot at guessing the PIN and gaining access. The card is the password.
- kstrauser 2y agoThe card is a physical representation of your account number, readable with a magstripe scanner. It's analogous to a username written on a scrap of paper. Despite the misnomer, a PIN can't really be an identifier if you and I have the same one.
- ramesh31 2y ago>Despite the misnomer, a PIN can't really be an identifier if you and I have the same one. Sure it can, the namespace is just within your account. I am logging into account X (account number) as Person Y (PIN) with authorization Z (card)
- marsavar 2y agoBeautiful visualisation - I just wish I could hover over the grid and see which PIN my cursor is pointing at.
- amelius 2y agoIt's nice but also flawed because you can't easily see if the first two digits are the same. Or the last two digits.
- nh23423fefe 2y agoyeah, i too feel limited by our 3 spatial dimensions
- volemo 2y agoIt was so frustrating when I was studying mathematics, I feel like just one more dimension would make understanding lots of concepts much easier; for me there is simply not enough points to extrapolate from: 0D is the degenerate case, 1D is trivial, so only two, 2D and 3D, are left to play with. %(
- tetris11 2y agocolor, fill, texture, shape - that gets you up to 7
- nh23423fefe 2y agodoesn't work, those dimensions aren't bijections to the reals
- amelius 2y agoIt's up to the designer to deal with any physical limitations. They could have added grid-lines to reveal this information, for example.
- xenadu02 2y ago
- lapcat 2y agoThe other problem is that people use the same PIN on their smartphones and debit cards, for example, because who can remember multiple PINs? We've replaced password sharing with PIN sharing.
- usrusr 2y agoYou made me wonder what my smartphone PIN actually is and now I can only access the device with the fingerprint reader. Usually my hands know what PIN to use, but apparently not when the brain gets involved. Guess I have to wait until I forget that I don't know that PIN.
- williamdclt 2y agoMy two bank apps require a pin for “fast access” rather than a password, it drives me crazy. I have a PW manager, let me use a safe password!
- deathanatos 2y agoIt is probably still almost 10%, but we seem to imply that "frequency of a pin within the set of all 4 digit pins" is frequency of the pin amongst the population, but that means we're not counting people who, e.g., use 6 digit pins. (Or I suppose that just reinforces the point: most people are setting first 2 digits of the 6 digit pin to "00", essentially, although now I wonder if a phone accepts 001234 and 1234 as equivalent. Is it a string, or an int? I'd presume the former…)
- graemep 2y agopopular ones must be better - otherwise why would they be popular?
- timrichard 2y agoNice to see 1-2-1-2 listed, the PIN of soundcheck guys everywhere.
- ddmf 2y agoI had an Italian sound engineer pal and a Czech one too...
- mindcrime 2y agoAn observation about 4 digit PIN's. They're even weaker than you might think just from "doing the math" at least in some cases. Sure, there's 10000 combinations to search through if you're trying to brute force one, but I'd bet money that in most cases you don't need to search anywhere near that many. Case in point: I had a unit at a mini-storage place once. And you needed a 4 digit PIN to get through the gate. And I forgot the PIN I used. I was sitting at the gate for a minute, staring at the keypad and realized "wait... hundreds of people have PINs in this system and the system doesn't care which one you use". So I just needed a PIN that somebody used. So I started with years that would have been reasonable birth years for an average adult at that time and starting going up. I think it took about 6 tries to find a valid PIN. Now granted, this is different than trying to brute force a specific person's PIN. But even then, I expect that in many cases an informed search will crack it a lot faster than a purely sequential search or a random search. Using common birth years, well known numbers like "5150", "1234", "4321", etc. is probably going to work a lot of times.
- ndr 2y agoWhat is "5150" well known for?
- marxisttemp 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanterman%E2%80%93Petris%E2%80%93Short_Act?wprov=sfti1# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanterman%E2%80%93Petris%E2%80...
- PopAlongKid 2y agoI had the same question. It is the title of a Van Halen record album, also a section of the California legal code related to mental health, according to a simple search.
- belter 2y agoOne of the best Van Halen albums?
- 2y ago
- NAHWheatCracker 2y agoI'm disappointed I couldn't mouse over the grid to find my PIN and see how popular it is...
- brilee 2y agoThis is a really belated blogspam repost. Original: http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/september32012/ http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/september32012/
- willvarfar 2y agoThe new link has some pretty good viz going on, so at lest they put a lot of effort into re-presenting the data.
- madcaptenor 2y ago"blogspam" is a bit harsh - it's based on a different dataset, and if you scroll down they do acknowledge Nick Berry's old analysis.
- dang 2y agoDiscussed several times on HN btw: Most common PIN codes (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40359736 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40359736 - May 2024 (88 comments) PIN number analysis (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17670173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17670173 - Aug 2018 (72 comments) Statistical Analysis of PIN Numbers (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11365962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11365962 - March 2016 (1 comment) The 20 most common PIN numbers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11230045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11230045 - March 2016 (1 comment) PIN analysis (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11228319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11228319 - March 2016 (1 comment) PIN number analysis - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5124024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5124024 - Jan 2013 (82 comments) PIN Number Analysis - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4654337 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4654337 - Oct 2012 (2 comments) Analysis of bank PIN numbers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4535417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4535417 - Sept 2012 (111 comments)
- travisgriggs 2y agoWish as you moused over the grid it would tell you the numerical value, or at least the one were on with precision so I could hover over mine (as well as others).
- asoneth 2y ago> Almost one in 10 people use the same four-digit PIN I can't think of the PIN 1234 without immediately thinking of Dark Helmet: "So the combination is one, two, three, four, five? That's the stupidest combination I ever heard in my life! That's the kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rSmMm-7SVA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rSmMm-7SVA
- causi 2y agoI'm flatly amazed "1701" isn't in the top 50.
- taco_emoji 2y agowhy?
- PenguinCoder 2y agoUSS Enterprise (NCC-1701), Star Trek reference.
- taco_emoji 2y agoOh duh, I should've caught that
- blame-troi 2y agoI’d like to think Trek watchers are smarter than that.
- causi 2y agoI know people with "8472" as well.
- AdmiralAsshat 2y agoOh good, my favorite Rush song is still safe.
- thedigitalone 2y agoActually 2112 is slightly elevated in the other reddit heatmap someone linked that you can zoom in on.
- dfxm12 2y agoHere's a heat map you can zoom in on: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1cn7l7r/oc_most_common_4_digit_pin_numbers_from_an/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1cn7l7r/oc... Also consider this scene from Trainspotting 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EQCpQbUrzI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EQCpQbUrzI :)
- alexey-salmin 2y agoThe post is much better than the clickbaity title suggests. Loved the visualisation and the fact that 2902/0229 are noticeably lighter than surroundings.
- bryanrasmussen 2y agoit seems like my pin of 1077, the same as a cheese pizza and soda at my old job, is still super secure.
- loganc2342 2y ago“So, what do I owe you?” “$10.77. Same as my PIN number.”
- tetris11 2y ago0775 seems to be safe too
- hiccuphippo 2y agoWould 0600 be even safer then?
- tetris11 2y agoyes, but perhaps change ownership too
- baggy_trough 2y agoFar better to use a six digit pin, like 0-0-0-0-0-0.
- urda 2y agoSounds like the Team Fortress 2 "Meet the Spy" PIN "1-1-1-uh-1!"
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- sitkack 2y agoWhat a beautiful infoviz presentation, esp for a major news site. Good work Julian Fell and Teresa Tan!
- taeric 2y agoHard not to ack that the common ones are the default values of most locks? Is akin to finding that the default admin password on many databases/servers/etc is not changed by the users?
- codr7 2y agoThat being said, you usually need the matching gadget/account as well. Four digit PINs are a fine solution in many contexts. A bigger problem is always going all in nuclear when it comes to security. If the solution is impossible to use, no one gives a shit about security.
- mindtricks 2y agoThe fact that my technology-inhibited parents somehow chose one of the lesser used combinations has left me dumbfounded.
- kayodelycaon 2y agoFor a while I used the first 4 digits from my old zip code. e.g. 2050
- cedws 2y agoIt’s 2025, why are we still protecting our money with 4 digits? Our phones have advanced biometrics, why can’t our cards have that too? Card issuers need to stop being lazy because they have a monopoly and innovate a bit.
- ciupicri 2y agoBecause you can't change biometrics. What are you going to do, wear gloves so that you have a different fingerprint?
- craftkiller 2y agoThe money is also protected by your financial institution's fraud detection. I've had everything from ATM transactions to store purchases flagged as fraud despite having the correct PIN and the physical card.
- beej71 2y agoWhen I need a pin, I use uuidgen and grab the first four decimal digits. (I guess that could potentially include the `4` but it hasn't happened yet and the odds are low.) I guess I'd better screen some of them out! True story: friend had a bank (in the 1990s) randomly generate a PIN of 2222 for him. He got it reset.
- culi 2y agoThis is a cool visualization! I didn't know ABC did this sort of stuff
- wiseowise 2y agoOnly 1 in 10?
- gweinberg 2y agoI think a pin is only supposed to be a second line of defense, like entering your zip code with your credit card. People who use 1234 as an ATM pin think their card prolly won;t get stolen, and if it is, the machines all have cameras so you can see the thief picking his nose.
- bdcravens 2y agoFor anything where I can set/reset the PIN with the card already in possession (which is pretty much everything it seems), I just have an algorithm I use based off of the actual card details, so I never have to memorize anything.
- mrkramer 2y agoSo this is like Birthday paradox but for PINs.
- b212 2y agoJust mix and match two last digits of the year your parents/siblings were born and you’re golden. Side note; I’m surprised 6969 is not more popular :)
- dfboyd 2y agohttps://dfboyd.github.io/hw/index.html https://dfboyd.github.io/hw/index.html A clickable version of the original heatmap