News Comprehension Activity

The world’s most common pin number

Created on August 6, 2013

A study by scientists have found that the world’s most popular PIN number or password is the number – 1234.  Infact a staggering 11% of people have this as their number.

This number was closely followed by 1111, 0000 and 7777 as other most popular numbers.

The study found that people generally use important dates or information as a guide when picking their PIN  number. The most popular of these is a pet’s birthday or the date of a wedding anniversary.

Research suggests that many people simply opt for the most memorable code they can think of.

Using the digits zero to nine there are a total of around 10,000 possible ways to form a four-digit PIN code.

But using data from security breaches and previously released or exposed password tables, the bloggers found that 11% of the 3.4 million passwords they looked at were 1234 – a proportion they described as “staggering” and betraying a “lack of imagination.”

Questions

1. Why do you think the most popular pin number is 1234?
2. Which pin number closely follows 1234 as the second most popular?
3. how many possible ways are there to form a four digit code using the 0 to 9?
4. What percent of people have the pin number 1234?
5. Why do banks tell people not to use their birth date as a pin number?
6. Why do you think people would choose important dates as pin numbers?