Warning: Don’t Use one of these 20 Dangerous Smartphone PINs

Your smartphone stores a very large amount of personal data about you and you should do everything you can to keep it secure. Most modern Android and iOS phones offer the ability for you to use biometric identification like Face ID or fingerprint, but when these options fail you will fall back on your device’s PIN code.

The PIN code may in fact be the weakest link in the safety of your device. And if your device is compromised many other personal accounts may be exploited if you are already logged in – email, bank accounts, social media profiles, etc. Having this in mind, you will be surprised to know how many people choose an insecure PIN to protect their smartphones.

A recent study determined that both 4-digit and 6-digit PIN codes can be easily guessed by an attacker or a brute-force program. A four-digit PIN can be used to create 10,000 different combinations, while a six-digit PIN can be used to create one million. Regardless of this fact, it was actually proven that 6-digit PINs may be less secure. Why? Because of the way people think.

When presented with a bigger choice, the participants more often than not selected an easy pattern in order to remember the PIN. For example, many people decided to set 123456 or 654321 which is very easy to guess. Another advice that is often given by security experts is not to use birthdays or similar dates that may be publicly available on your social media profiles. Try to think of something that only you know and you will not easily forget.

So, if your PIN is one of the numbers on the list below, it is definitely time to change it as those are the most commonly used and at the same time the weakest PIN codes.