Most common PIN codes (2012) (datagenetics.com)

Ok, we've changed the url from https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/most-commo... to that. Thanks!

During tax season (in US), for security, you may optionally create a 5 digit pin. I wanted mine to be unaffiliated with any existing pin I have, and chose a 'random' number and wrote it down. A year later I repeated this (and had long since forgotten the previous pin), went to go write it in the same place, and saw that both 'random' numbers had the same first four digits. I now use a computer to choose random numbers because I no longer trust myself to be random.

I think the venn diagram of “people who find primes interesting” and “people who understand password security” is pretty close to a circle.

3,5,7 line up on the diagonal, leaving 2 as the only other prime. So people using physical patters are likely to choose them. Not to mention any mathematically inclined person may also choose all primes.

I'm using correct-horce-battery-staple to fool those pesky kids with dictionaries.

I changed mine to Hunter2. LOL at least it HN strips out your password when you type it in a comment.

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

Most to least common 4-digit PIN numbers from an analysis of 3.4M - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40306374 - May 2024 (19 comments)

Statistical Analysis of PIN Numbers (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11365962 - March 2016 (1 comment)

The 20 most common PIN numbers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11230045 - March 2016 (1 comment)

PIN analysis (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11228319 - March 2016 (1 comment)

Analysis of bank PIN numbers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4535417 - Sept 2012 (111 comments)

(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40306374 didn't get any frontpage time so we won't treat current post as a dupe)

What is your pin code? All I see is ****.

One of my kids friends uses the same pin as I had when he was a kid. I would give him and my kid my debit card and they would go get pizza if they cleaned my office.

1077

You should probably use SRANDOM; less bias from the modulo (32 bits instead of 15) and uses arc4random or /dev/urandom if available.

I'll remember to prioritise 0000 to 2767 for your PINs, then.

    for i in $(seq 1000000); do
        echo $[RANDOM%10000]; 
    done | sort -n | uniq -c | sort -rn | gnuplot -e "set terminal dumb; set xtics 1000; plot '< cat' using 0:1 with boxes"

  for i in $(seq 1000000); do x=$((RANDOM)); while test $x -gt 30000;do x=$((RANDOM)); done; echo $((x%10000));      done |sort|uniq -c |sort -rn |gnuplot -e "set terminal dumb; set xtics 100; plot '<cat'"

  for i in $(seq 1000000); do         echo $((SRANDOM%10000));      done | sort -n | uniq -c | sort -rn |gnuplot -e "set terminal dumb; set xtics 100; plot '<cat'"

1-2-3-4, that's amazing, I have the same combination on my luggage!

I have a pin lock on a shared device, that friends use occassionally. Of the three friends I have given guest access to, all three asked for their pin to be 1234, to which I said no. One had the audacity to follow up with 123456

Thank you so much. This is the comment I was hoping for in this thread.

For serious though - one reason such utterly trivial codes are common are because the "lock" is just use as a fancy way of preventing the zipper from coming undone.

Likewise, on the internet, a lot of things prompt for passwords that really don't need them. People create throwaway accounts and use them as if they were temporary anonymous sessions.

Trust me, for the luggage this is a brilliant combination. Or something like 0000. Unless I work for a 3-letter institute, I leave all luggage to their default or the usual. If someone steals a luggage, that PIN is least of the problem but everyone else in the household will if you forgot your super-smart PIN.

Edit: The joke hit me a tad late. ;-)

I was disappointed that my typical PIN for low security things like the snack storage closet at work, 2112, isn't there. I figured there would be more Rush fans than there are I guess.

In (game) Rust, the players can use 4 digit keylocks to secure their bases and brute forcing is indeed a strategy. The lock zaps and eventually kills you but even with that, a determined player can eventually get in.

Honestly that sounds sufficiently secure for what it is.

18% of people use the top 3 pins, so you would need 6 cards to expect to get 1. 56 cards would give you an expectation of 10.

Try this and report back!