What’s a two-factor authentication?
Nowadays it is difficult to find someone without any activity on the Internet. Our accounts and profiles are secured by logins and passwords as a standard but have you ever considered a safer form of login? We’ll tell you what 2-factor authentication is and where you can use it.
↓ Scroll down to learn how to turn on two-factor authentication on popular websites ↓
Why should you use two-factor authentication?
Let’s consider why the protection of your accounts on social media and email is so important. How valuable are your data for you? Each of us should answer this question. There are so many stories about important documents in the mailbox or private photos stored on social networks. Even if you don’t store sensitive information or files, it is always safer to protect access to our accounts and profiles. Two-factor authentication will help with that.
What is 2FA?
Two-factor authentication is a function which adds additional protection when logging into the account. It requires us to authenticate twice when logging in – firstly using a login (username or email address) and password, and secondly with a password that can be generated in a variety of ways. The most popular are:
- SMS code,
- codes generated in the authentication application
- tokens, i.e. a physical USB key.
Two-factor authentication does not provide a 100% safety guarantee but reduces the risk of a fraudster logging into our account. If our login details leaked, the scammer could easily log into the account without our knowledge. Then a big barrier for a hacker would be two-step authentication, which would require to physically own your phone, token or app. Two-factor authentication can be considered an inconvenient form of logging in but at this point, you have to choose what is more important to you – your security or convenience.
You are probably starting to wonder if your favourite portals offer an additional option to secure login. We will start with a list of the most popular portals in which we can strengthen our security with two-factor authentication:
Online shopping sites:
- Allegro
- Amazon
- eBay
Messaging applications:
- Skype
- Slack
Social Media:
- Snapchat
Email services:
- Gmail
- Outlook
- yahoo.com
Other:
- YouTube
- PayPal
- Dropbox
As you can see, the list is quite long and probably each of us has an account on at least one of the websites listed above. These are the most popular websites, and if you want you can check which other portals and websites have 2FA available, click here.
How do you activate two-factor authentication?
Activating the two-step verification is not complicated. In most cases, you need to find the “Settings” tab and then select the “Security” option.
As you can see, you only need a few clicks and you will significantly increase your security, so it’s worth spending a few moments on Saturday afternoon to activate it.
Below you can find instructions of how to enable 2FA on various portals. Take a look!
If you have any questions, please visit us on Facebook or ask us in the comment section. 🙂
