To prevent internet fraud, please enter your four-digit Personal Identification Number (PIN) below:
Not having any luck? Maybe that's because you haven't been using your PIN much lately. Typical isn't it? You can remember who won the Cup Final in 1978, you can remember how to operate a motor vehicle on a busy motorway and you can remember what cup size Jordan is, but you can't remember a simple four-digit number. But then numbers are scary, aren't they? Nasty horrible mathematical things which remind you of algebra, trigonometry and failure. Stop quivering, you wimp. Things were so much easier yesterday, before midnight, when you could get away with just using a signature. Any old biro squiggle would do, because the dumb shopgirl never once bothered to even glance at it, did she? But now there's a funny black keypad with mysterious buttons and no instructions, and you have to type the correct security number to prove you are who you say you are, and it's dead unnerving. Go on, have another go, you might have remembered it correctly by now...
If you find your PIN difficult to remember, you can change it. You can change it at a cash machine, for example, except that you have to enter your current PIN first which sort of defeats the point of the exercise. It's best to change your PIN to something that's easy to remember. Numbers like '1111' or '1234', for example, should be simple enough even for somebody in the early stages of Alzheimers. But don't choose anything too obvious, like '1966' or Jordan's cup size, because half the red-blooded males in the country use those. And don't use anything which also appears on your driving licence, like your date of birth or number of traffic violation points, because anybody stealing your wallet or handbag could easily gain access to those. Fancy trying again?
Some easily memorable PINs: • Use your highest two lottery numbers. • Use your credit card's maximum overdraft limit. • Use the 'secret' number you've scribbled on the back of your card in biro. • Use 13 and 26, which are the atomic numbers of the two most abundant metals in the Earth's crust (as any fule know) • Use '4846', which represents the number of letters in the first four words of Virgil's Aeneid ("Arma virumque cano, Troiae") • Oh go on, use '1234' then, at least you won't forget it.
