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"      The leak of 5 million Gmail passwords was your weekly reminder of the terrible insecurity of the current password system. And until somebody comes up with the next great way to do security, experts will keep warning us to follow the password best practices. But don&amp;#039;t forget: Your PIN might be terrible, too. We all know people tend to choose 1234, their birth year, or their kid&amp;#039;s birthday as an easy-to-remember but utterly obvious four-number combination. An alarming number of folks fall into this category. Just watch this YouTube video by The Breaking Bit, which features an amazingly informative chart that demonstrates just how many people choose awful PINs. Skip to the 2:50 mark to watch for yourself. The bad decisions just jump off the screen. As the narrator points out, 1234 might be the worst offender, but it&amp;#039;s far from the only obvious choice. In addition to years and particular dates (in either the MM/DD or DD/MM configuration), people love symmetrical combinations (3333 or 2626). They&amp;#039;ll also take advantage of the fact that ATM keypads have legacy letters overlaid on the numbers to spell out four-letter words like &amp;quot;love.&amp;quot; Shapes are popular, too, such as the square formed by punching 1254. Whenever we talk about PIN or password security, I&amp;#039;m reminded of this bit of brilliance from XKCD. Please: Take a moment of your life to memorize a string of arbitrary words or numbers that will get stuck in your head but mean nothing to anybody else. You&amp;#039;ll thank yourself later. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a11254/this-graph-explains-why-your-pin-sucks-17195908/>