Tech consultancy company DataGenetics has analyzed the popularity of numeric passwords. What they found confirms previous research that most of our four-digit PINs are way too predictable. DataGenetics analyzed nearly 3.4 million leaked four-digit passwords – such as those used for banking or to lock your phone – and figured out which are the most popular. These are PINs you should not use, because they’re incredibly predictable. A staggering 26.83% of all passwords could be guessed by attempting just 20 combinations! So out of the 10,000 possible combinations for four-digit codes, which is the most popular? Nearly 11% of the 3.4 million passwords were 1234. Other high frequency PINs are years and dates. Here are the most popular PINs:
| PIN | Frequency | PIN | Frequency |
| 1. 1234 | 10.713% | 11. 9999 | 0.451% |
| 2. 1111 | 6.016% | 12. 3333 | 0.419% |
| 3. 0000 | 1.881% | 13. 5555 | 0.395% |
| 4. 1212 | 1.197% | 14. 6666 | 0.391% |
| 5. 7777 | 0.745% | 15. 1122 | 0.366% |
| 6. 1004 | 0.616% | 16. 1313 | 0.304% |
| 7. 2000 | 0.613% | 17. 8888 | 0.303% |
| 8. 4444 | 0.526% | 18. 4321 | 0.293% |
| 9. 2222 | 0.516% | 19. 2001 | 0.290% |
| 10. 6969 | 0.512% | 20. 1010 | 0.285% |
Researchers also discovered other interesting patterns – people apparently prefer even numbers to odd ones, for instance. As for the least frequent PINs, 8068 was the rarest combination, used in just 0.000744% of the surveyed passwords. Of course, you don’t want to use that either now – as DataGenetics notes, “Hackers can read too!”