Although there are 10,000 possible combinations of four-digit personal identification numbers, data suggests that about 27% of all PINs are one of 20 combinations, including 1234, 1111, and 0000.

The top 200 most common passwords—you probably shouldn't use

Many people use the same weak passwords year after year. Check out the 2022 list of top 200 most common passwords used around the world.

Visualize how passkeys, which rely on asymmetric cryptography to authenticate users, work

After using biometrics or a PIN to access the private key stored on a device, it is combined with a random number generated by the site to produce a cryptographic signature. This signature is verified using the site's public key, allowing a user to log in without entering a password. This reduces the risk of fraudulent messages—phishing attacks—and data breaches.

Microchips in payment cards improve security by generating unique transaction codes

Magnetic strips store unchanging data that is easily cloned, but microchips act as miniature computers that encrypt sensitive data. They also resist fraud by creating data unique to each transaction, preventing duplication.

Passkeys, a new authentication method, aim to replace traditional passwords

Passkeys use cryptography keys to secure logins without passwords, resisting phishing and risks from data breaches. The FIDO Alliance developed passkeys as a combination of public and private keys for authentication.

20 of the most common cyberattacks

While there are dozens of different types of cyber attacks, this article explains the top 20 most common network attack examples, including phishing, whale-phishing, and spear-phishing attacks. Learn how to best protect yourself.

Explore an interactive timeline of the world's biggest data breaches and hacks, led by the 2024 National Public Data breach, which involved almost three billion stolen records, including full names and Social Security numbers.

Every printed bill has its own unique serial number

In the US, each bill also has its own plate number, series year, Treasury seal, and more. Each design helps track money and combat counterfeiting.

Chip technology replaced magstripes to stop easy card cloning and fraud

The magstripe on bank cards always gives the same data, making it simple to copy using a device called a grabber. In contrast, embedded chips create a unique code with every transaction, making it much harder to clone or steal card information.

62% of online shoppers search for coupons or discount codes before making a purchase

Capital One estimates that 169.2 million Americans redeemed digital coupons in 2025. The bank compiled many different coupon statistics on how both shoppers and businesses used coupons last year, most of which reveal the increasing dominance of digital coupons over physical ones.

A mathematical breakdown of how RSA encryption uses prime numbers to encrypt data

This form of asymmetric cryptography uses mathematical functions that rely on the product of two large prime numbers. Because traditional computers struggle to factor such products, obtaining the private keys needed to decrypt messages becomes effectively impossible. This security can be reinforced with larger prime numbers, though this makes encryption more computationally taxing.

Has your information been compromised on the internet?

Have I Been Pwned allows you to search across multiple data breaches to see if your email address or phone number has been compromised.

The most popular American baby names by decade

In 1998, the Social Security Administration began ranking the top 1,000 most common first names for each year dating back to 1880. While that list has since been whittled down, Americans can still gain insight into the trending names of the decade. Whether it’s just for curiosity or to avoid more common choices, check out this list of popular names from the past century.

The odds of a perfect March Madness bracket are worse than finding one specific grain of sand on Earth

With 63 games to predict, random guessing produces odds of 1 in 9.2 quintillion. Even an informed picker who gets 67% of games right faces odds of about 1 in 120 billion, meaning if every American filled out a unique bracket, we'd expect a perfect one in roughly 366 years.

The most bizarre numbers in the universe

Even for math-y types, some numbers are incomprehensible. This article dives into several kinds of numbers more complicated than even irrational numbers with endless decimals like "pi" or Euler's number: Noncomputable numbers. Read the bizarre...

Claude Shannon, for whom Anthropic's AI tools are named, proved the existence of an unbreakable cipher

In the one-time pad approach, the encryption key is randomly generated and of equal length to the plaintext. This randomness ensures that every possible plaintext is equally likely—RBBHN can mean HELLO, SOLVE, CODES, and so on, using a different key—while matching the message and key lengths prevents the appearance of patterns that can be exploited.

The most common birthdays

Nine of the top 10 most common birthdays fall in September, with Sept. 9 being the most common. However, August is the most common birth month, followed by July and December. On the flip side, the least common birthdays are around major holidays, with Christmas Day being the rarest—probably due to doctors scheduling fewer inductions and C-sections on those days. Find out more birthday surprises here.

Near-universal banking masks a large underbanked shadow system

FDIC data indicates 128 million households have a checking account, the vast majority (96% in 2024). But more than 14% of households are underbanked, meaning they have accounts but also rely on nonbank services such as check cashing, payday loans, or prepaid cards.

Only 14% of transactions are in cash, as of 2025

Credit (35%) and debit (30%) cards have long eclipsed cash as the primary method of payment in the US. It is a primary backup, however, with 90% of customers intending to use cash to pay or store value and 80% carrying cash.

Why there are microchips in credit cards

Credit cards have evolved significantly since their invention in 1950, but security lagged in the US for years. Despite handling only a quarter of global transactions, the US once accounted for half of all credit card fraud. The 2013 Target data breach helped push the adoption of chip cards, reducing fraud but shifting risks to online scams.

Privacy concerns in the credit scoring system

Because credit scores use a lot of personal information (such as whether or not someone makes credit card payments on time), some worry their privacy is being compromised in the data collection process.

Gas stations top the list of riskiest places to use a debit card

Unlike credit cards, debit cards withdraw funds directly from your checking account, and federal laws provide fewer consumer protections against debit fraud. Gas station "skimmers" and long periods of separation from the card at restaurants are some of the more vulnerable spots for use.

Algorithms built to detect credit card fraud can deny charges if they perceive the attempted purchase is unfamiliar or unusual based on historical data, even when a person has enough credit to make the purchase.

Old credit cards can be made into guitar picks, phone stands and more

Experts recommend always cutting through the chip and the card number when disposing of expired credit cards, as the magnetic strip, the chip, and the card number all contain information that thieves might be interested in.

Customers wrote just one check a year in 2024, on average

Major retailers like Target have stopped accepting checks in recent years as real-time payment systems are increasingly being implemented across the US. This shift is considered an improvement in safety—as checks are vulnerable to fraud—but can lead to some exclusion for those without access to digital devices.

Fraud and identity theft are among the most common dark web-related crimes.

How hash functions encrypt stored passwords and can be enhanced with 'salt'

Hash functions convert text into unique, random sets of characters, a process that is computationally expensive and time-consuming to undo. Because hashed outputs for many common passwords are publicly listed, some sites use a salt—additional characters appended to a password—before hashing to produce an output that is not known. When entering a password, it is salted and hashed, then checked against the database for a matching hash before permitting login.

The first algorithmic random number generator was developed in 1946

Although previous methods of randomness involved physical tools with limited outcomes, such as dice, or relied on chaotic variables for number generation, such as electronic noise, John Von Neumann's middle-square method turned the problem into a mathematical computation. It has since been replaced by methods that generate numbers from unique initial values, such as the time on a clock.

Paper check usage is down 83% over 25 years

At the start of the millennium, more than 68 million checks were processed daily. Amid the adoption of automated clearinghouse (ACH) payment systems, that number has sunk to 12 million a day.

Some coin denominations have ridges on their sides in part to prevent counterfeiting.

A FIRE number is the amount of money someone needs in retirement

To calculate one’s FIRE number, FIRE followers typically multiply their expected annual expenses in retirement by 25.

The science of cryptography, including methods to encrypt data and how to break encryption

Monoalphabetic ciphers use a set of rules to replace each letter with another consistently, making them susceptible to brute force attacks that try every kind of replacement. While more complex ciphers can transform text in less obvious ways, because certain letters are used more often than others, an analysis of letter frequency may reveal patterns that help uncover the rules that make up a cipher.

An overview of 12 fundamental types of algorithms and the uses for each

These include search algorithms to quickly process and find important information, cryptographic algorithms to secure communications, randomized algorithms—such as Monte Carlo simulations for estimating probabilities of outcomes—and greedy algorithms, which make optimal choices based on available data in a step-by-step fashion, as seen in navigation apps.

Triplet birth numbers are dropping—and that may be a good thing

Pregnancies involving three kids or more have dropped 62% from 1998 to 2023, a trend that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention links to fewer embryo transfers during assisted reproduction procedures—a transition prompted by more refined techniques and technical advances. Though multiple births can occur naturally, often pregnancies involving multiple births have been the result of efforts to ensure pregnancy success by transferring multiple embryos.

Apple Pay is activated on more than 78% of US iPhones

As a result, some banks worry they could be losing ground to the tech company. As consumers continue to use Apple Pay instead of pulling out their physical debit card to pay for everyday items, some banks are fighting back in the digital wallet war.

AI could be increasing the opportunities for financial fraud

Systems that can reproduce near perfect counterfeits of legitimate financial documents are increasingly prevalent and sophisticated. The international Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimate organizations lose about 5% of revenue to fraud each year.

Visa, the first credit card network, still dominates competitors with a roughly 52% market share by purchase volume.

Among the major credit card companies in the US, Mastercard had about 25% of the market share in 2025. American Express had roughly 20%, and Discover had the smallest market share of about 4%.

Try counting like the Maya in this interactive math game

The Maya numerical system used dots for 1, bars for 5, and a shell symbol for zero. This interactive resource lets users practice counting with the Maya base-20 system using the same symbols once common in the Yucatán.

There are more chess game variations than observable atoms in the universe

Mathematician Claude Shannon estimated there are 10 to the 120th power variations of chess games possible. Known as the "Shannon number," this is more than the estimated number of atoms in the cosmos.

What is the 240 paychecks retirement rule?

Many people think about the large sum of money they'll require to retire comfortably. It can be intimidating. The 240 retirement method breaks that thinking down into paychecks. Specifically, the framework argues that the average retiree will need 240 paychecks to retire. Learn more here.