As a responsible CIO, you've no doubt drilled into your mobile users the importance of setting a PIN code to lock their mobile devices. What you may not know is that many of your users are choosing commonplace and easy-to-guess codes, according to an analysis of passcodes.

Daniel Amitay, the developer behind the iPhone app Big Brother Camera Security, analyzed iPhone passcodes and discovered that the 10 most common PINs used by iPhone users accounted for 15 percent of the 204,508 passwords analyzed.

Amitay’s Big Brother Camera Security app for the iPhone 4 automatically takes a picture of anyone using the iPhone 4 using the front-mounted camera. The idea is to let users see who might be using the smartphone without permission. In the latest update, Amitay added code to collect information about the passcodes users are selecting to protect the camera app.

Out of the 204,508 codes the app sent back anonymously to Amitay, "1234" was the most commonly used, with 4.3 percent users. The second most common code was "0000," picked by 2.6 percent of the users. Amitay believes that since the passcode setup screen and lock screens on Big Brother Camera Security are “nearly identical” to the actual iPhone passcode screen, there is a high correlation between the two.

The 10 most common passwords uncovered by Amitay were:

1. 1234
2. 0000
3. 2580
4. 1111
5. 5555
6. 5683
7. 0852
8. 2222
9. 1212
10. 1998

For more, read the eWeek article Top 10 PIN Codes Picked by iPhone Users.

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