Choosing a Strong Home Security Pin Code

If you've just had a monitored alarm installed, one of the last things the technician would have given you before he left was the default pin code, and instructions for changing it. We all have our own little tricks to try and remember the passwords that we need to remember. Where we can, we'll re-use passwords as often as possible. Where there are odd requirements, like having a combination of letters and numbers, having some capital letters, or having a non alphanumeric character, we often use things that are strangely predictable … without even realizing it! The pinpads provided by alarm monitoring services reduce the possibilities only to numbers, though, making security much harder to ensure. Here we look at how to choose a strong pin code for your alarm monitoring service.

1. No birthdays!

Tempting as it is to use yours, your spouse's, or your kid's birthday when you need a numeric-only password, this is a very bad idea for home security. This information is actually very often in the public domain. The other thing to consider is that (sad as it might be) a large percentage of burglaries are committed by people known to the victims.

2. No other personal numbers

Using your anniversary is discoverable by someone determined, and your phone number is inordinately easy. It is definitely not in the interests of your home security to use either of these numbers. Nothing with a personal connection to you is ideal, including the numbers on your licence plate (which may be visible from the alarm system keypad, even), your employee number, and even your name spelled out using the numbers that would be on a mobile phone numberpad.

3. No repetitive or patterned numbers

111111 is pretty easy to guess -- so is 999999, and 123456, 987654 and others are not far off. Simple patterns are guessable, and if somebody is watching you enter your code on a keypad, the action of your fingers when typing in a pattern of numbers will be easy to distinguish.

4. Randomness is a top priority

Make sure there is absolutely no reason that you choose the number you do. Have each member of the household pick one of the numbers, and put them in age order. There are lots and lots of combinations of numbers for keypads … if you have a six digit code, there are a million of them. It is easy to pick something random, and while it may be harder to remember for a couple of days, the repetition will soon take care of that. Don’t sabotage your alarm monitoring service with a crackable code!