I went for a 4-digit PIN as well (2459, chosen as randomly as I could, for what it’s worth), although I rarely use a 4-digit PIN in real life.
On my mobile devices, I still use numeric PINs, but they’re fairly long and correspond to words. Since most phone keypads have three or four letters assigned to a number, I tap in the numbers corresponding to the word. (e.g. DREAMWIDTH would be 3732694384) You only get eight choices, since the 0 and the 1 aren’t used, but I find it sufficient, since it’s not the 4-digit PIN most people expect. It also means that somebody looking over my shoulder finds it that much harder to remember the number, because it appears pretty random.
An unfortunate side-effect of this is that I regularly try to enter one of my long PINs when I’m using my bank cards. I’ve got more than one confused look about that, but next time I’m in I might ask about a longer PIN; would be good.
You’ve probably seen stuff like this already, but here’s some statistics from an iOS developer of the pass codes used in his app. What’s especially interesting is how he breaks it down by first, second, third and fourth digit, and the statistics for each. (Although Apple booted him out of the store for doing it.)
no subject
On my mobile devices, I still use numeric PINs, but they’re fairly long and correspond to words. Since most phone keypads have three or four letters assigned to a number, I tap in the numbers corresponding to the word. (e.g. DREAMWIDTH would be 3732694384) You only get eight choices, since the 0 and the 1 aren’t used, but I find it sufficient, since it’s not the 4-digit PIN most people expect. It also means that somebody looking over my shoulder finds it that much harder to remember the number, because it appears pretty random.
An unfortunate side-effect of this is that I regularly try to enter one of my long PINs when I’m using my bank cards. I’ve got more than one confused look about that, but next time I’m in I might ask about a longer PIN; would be good.
You’ve probably seen stuff like this already, but here’s some statistics from an iOS developer of the pass codes used in his app. What’s especially interesting is how he breaks it down by first, second, third and fourth digit, and the statistics for each. (Although Apple booted him out of the store for doing it.)