Deadbolt Your Accounts

A password is all that stands between your personal information and the bad guy who wants to get it. To better protect your vital accounts, some services are now offering two-step verification. You already use two-step verification every time you go to the ATM. In order to get money from your account, you must have the card and your PIN. You can think of using two-step verification as like a deadbolt for your account. Sure, locking the door (using a secure password) is good, but don’t you feel safer using a deadbolt?

By requiring “something you are” or “something you have” in addition to a password (or PIN), it makes it harder for someone else to get access. “Something you are” can be as sophisticated as a fingerprint or retina pattern and “something you have” can be a card, token (like you might have for work), or something else of which you uniquely have physical possession.

Google, Dropbox, Facebook and WordPress are some of the common services that now offer this enhanced security. To provide the second verification in addition to your regular password, they employ either a mobile app or send a text to your mobile phone to give you a unique code. There are other measures in place in the case that you lose your mobile phone which are covered in the setup for each service.

Typically the two-step verification is only required one time for new devices, so once you authorize a device you can just login normally. You would only need the second step when you login from a new mobile phone or computer.

If you have critical information in any of these places, you should strongly consider turning on two-step verification. Check out the Kippt links page for this month to learn more and activate two-step verification for these services.

Is anyone currently using two-step authentication (besides me)? I’d love to hear your thoughts on your experience with it.