How many PINS

[DavidS]

Now that credit cards are going over to PINS as opposed to signatures, how many PIN numbers is it practical to carry around in your head? I appreciate you can change them to a single number, but security experts don't advise this. They certainly think it's a bad idea to write them down.

[jj]

You can carry hundreds of phone nos. quite happily in your head (well, I can...), so that's not the problem. Remebering which PIN is for which card, that'd stump me- I have to try half a dozen passwords to get into one site nowadays.
What I don't like is these turkeys trying to shift the security-burden onto the customer- that's their responsibility, not ours.
And they'd better not try and charge me for any security upgrades- they can pay for them out of their obscene, usurious profits.

[DavidS]

You are, of course, right jj. The problem I find with telephone numbers is, that although most times I can recall them, my mind does sometime go blank regarding a certain numbers.

[spider]

A good way of remembering PIN numbers is to have the PIN number as the last four digits of a telephone number you have already memorised.

i.e The Barclaycard PIN is the last four digits of the home telephone number, The Mastercard PIN is the last four digits of the work telephone number.

[jj]

Try writing them down a few times- it's an old trick, I know, but it does seem to work.
But there are certain combinations (too many 7s and 9s are a prob) that just don't seem to stick, for which I have to compose an aide-memoire or a mnemonic.