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personal identification number
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short, numeric passcode used to access certain services such as ATMs
~12 min read
Encyclopedic overview
A personal identification number (PIN; sometimes redundantly a PIN code or PIN number) is a numeric (sometimes alpha-numeric) passcode used in the process of authenticating a user accessing a system.
The PIN has been the key to facilitating the private data exchange between different data-processing centers in computer networks for financial institutions, governments, and enterprises. PINs may be used to authenticate banking systems with cardholders, governments with citizens, enterprises with employees, and computers with users, among other uses.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “personal identification number” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.