DataGenics.com took a look at 10000 pin codes they assembled from variousleaked data sets. The results are amazing:
I was able to find almost 3.4 million four digit passwords. Every single one of the of the 10,000 combinations of digits from 0000 through to 9999 were represented in the dataset.
The next most popular 4-digit PIN in use is 1111 with over 6% of passwords being this.
In third place is 0000 with almost 2%.
A table of the top 20 found passwords in shown at the right. A staggering 26.83% of all passwords could be guessed by attempting these 20 combinations!
(Statistically, with 10,000 possible combination, if passwords were uniformly randomly distributed, we would expect the these twenty passwords to account for just 0.2% of the total, not the 26.83% encountered)
Looking more closely at the top few records, all the usual suspects are present 1111 2222 3333 … 9999 as well as 1212 and (snigg*r) 6969.
It’s not a surprise to see patterns like 1122 and 1313 occurring high up in the list, nor 4321 or 1010.
2001 makes an appearance at #19. 1984 follows not far behind in position #26, and James Bond fans may be interested to know 0007 is found between the two of them in position #23 (another variant 0070 follows not much further behind at #28).
The first “puzzling” password I encountered was 2580 in position #22. What is the significance of these digits? Why should so many people select this code to make it appear so high up the list? Then I realized that 2580is a straight down the middle of a telephone keypad!
| PIN | Freq | |
|---|---|---|
| #1 | 1234 | 10.713% |
| #2 | 1111 | 6.016% |
| #3 | 0000 | 1.881% |
| #4 | 1212 | 1.197% |
| #5 | 7777 | 0.745% |
| #6 | 1004 | 0.616% |
| #7 | 2000 | 0.613% |
| #8 | 4444 | 0.526% |
| #9 | 2222 | 0.516% |
| #10 | 6969 | 0.512% |
| #11 | 9999 | 0.451% |
| #12 | 3333 | 0.419% |
| #13 | 5555 | 0.395% |
| #14 | 6666 | 0.391% |
| #15 | 1122 | 0.366% |
| #16 | 1313 | 0.304% |
| #17 | 8888 | 0.303% |
| #18 | 4321 | 0.293% |
| #19 | 2001 | 0.290% |
| #20 | 1010 | 0.285% |
Read his full analysis at: datagenetics.com/blog/september32012
As for passwords take a look at this:
Here (is) the listcompiled bySplashData:
1. password
2. 123456
3.12345678
4. qwerty
5. abc123
6. monkey
7. 1234567
8. letmein
9. trustno1
10. dragon
11. baseball
12. 111111
13. iloveyou
14. master
15. sunshine
16. ashley
17. bailey
18. passwOrd
19. shadow
20. 123123
21. 654321
22. superman
23. qazwsx
24. michael
25. football
For more details on the most common passwords read the full article HERE.
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