The last thing you want when you lose your ATM card is for someone to guess your PIN number and drain your account balance to zero.

But surprisingly (or perhaps depressingly) eleven per cent of people seem to have forgotten this and use the most common pin code of all time on their valuables: 1234.

Yes, really.

Nick Berry, a former rocket scientist and the president of technology consultancy company Data Genetics examined 3.4 million PINS, and of the 10,000 possible combinations of four digits, found that 50 per cent of us use the 426 most popular codes.

The second-worst pin number to use is 1111 (used by over six per cent of us), followed by 0000, 1212 and 7777.

So if you – or a thief - picks up an ATM or an iPhone in the street, you have a 1 in 5 chance of unlocking it by entering just five pin codes.

Your best bet for cash protection? Don’t use a birth year: every pin found beginning with ‘19’ (eg 1983, 1956, 1994) appeared in the top fifth of the dataset.

Choose four random, different numbers for your pin - 18 of the top 20 worst pins used patterns and repetitions. Including 6969.
Yes, really.