iPhone passcodes. Is yours one of the top 10 most common passcodes?

I read this article and thought it was worth sharing with others to help them improve their security. If you’re using one of the top 10 passcodes then perhaps it’s time to pick a new passcode. Before reading the article see if you can work out what you think the patterns are in the passcodes.

1234, 0000, 2580, 1111, 5555, 5683, 0852, 2222, 1212, 1998

It turns out that of 204,508 passcodes collected by an Apple iPhone app that 15% or around one in six people use one of these passcodes.

There are two lessons that can be learnt from this. The first is how easy it could be for people with nefarious intent to break into a person’s iPhone. Actually think of it another way. All a person need do is to try to break into 6-7 iPhones and he’ll most likely find one they can. They don’t necessarily have to break into a particular iPhone to achieve the result of hacking into an iPhone. The second lesson is how easy it is for a developer of an app to collect information that you have no idea what they are doing with it. Yes this information is anonymous, but collected information often reveals patterns about people’s behaviour and often we wouldn’t even know that what we do is a very common pattern. If others know we’re likely to behave in a certain way that can be used for good, or it can also be used for not so good purposes.

Bad purposes doesn’t even really have to be bad in the normal sense of bad. It could be like the GPS data being used by authorities to determine better locations to place speed cameras which could be used to increase revenue. That’s not considered bad usage unless of course you’re the one who ends up getting fined.

How are your photos being used? How is your location information being used? How is what you search for being used? How is your voice being used? How is your “Like” information being used? I for one would never have expected anyone would have collected passcode information and sent that information outside of the application and device. Perhaps there’s a good reason. (Apple has since pulled the app.)

This is certainly food for thought. At a minimum check the passcodes and make sure you’re not using one of the top ten, or for that matter a year, which are also quite common. Whilst we are all so very different, it is amazing how we are often all so similar.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au