Make Your Email Hacker Proof
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Make Your Email Hacker Proof
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Re: Make Your Email Hacker Proof
#2What happens when you travel abroad and your phone does not work?
I am wondering if Gmail could implement security questions to avoid cases where the 2-step verification works against the user
Re: Make Your Email Hacker Proof
#3What happens when you travel abroad and your phone does not work? I am wondering if Gmail could implement security questions to avoid cases where the 2-step verification works against the user
Firstly, the Google Authenticator application does not require a network connection. See: http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1...
If you are planning to be without your phone, you can always disable 2-step verification temporarily: https://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...
Finally, if you lose your phone, you should always have your single-use backup verification codes to allow you to login.
Re: Make Your Email Hacker Proof
#4What I really want is for the second factor to kick on only in suspicious situations, e.g.:
* I'm logging in from a computer that I've never logged in from before
* I'm searching my mail history for terms like "password"
* I'm opening an email that appears to contain a password-reset link
* I'm messing with my mail-forwarding options
* I'm accessing messages in bulk
But I do not want to have to do second factor just because it's been 31 days since the last time I've done it.
Re: Make Your Email Hacker Proof
#5What happens for IMAP accounts? e.g through Mail.app or Thunderbird?
Re: Make Your Email Hacker Proof
#6I put a copy of the single-use backup verification codes into an alternate dropbox account I have (that isn't linked to my primary email address). Figured if I'm somewhere with enough internet access to get to gmail, I'll be able to get to dropbox.com and get the codes.
Re: Make Your Email Hacker Proof
#7This worry seems a bit overblown to me. If your email is that important to you, you should follow these steps:
1. Use a unique, long, random, secure password.
2. Don't tell it to anyone.
3. Use an email service that stores passwords hashed with a salt and a secure hash algorithm.
And you will have nothing to worry about. If you are very paranoid or traveling a lot, you can add:
4. Don't log in from insecure devices.
5. Make sure nobody's filming your fingers when you type your password.
If you're actually concerned with these two, you probably have bigger issues and are already taking more precautions like 2-factor authorization or so on anyway.
Re: Make Your Email Hacker Proof
#8> Hey, This Sounds Like a Pain!
Yes, because it is a pain. Try going on a vacation, you know the one where you don't use cell roaming. SMS is out, so then one must find a Wifi hotspot to use one of the smartphone time based tokens (edit: seems the token don't need a network connection, could have fooled me). And those time based tokens go out of wack if your phone didn't sync the timezone properly to match Google's setup, so every token ends up not working.
Use the print out backup verification codes on a piece of paper? No, because they are single use. So you end up using up all your backup codes depending on the length of your vacation. I've used 2 step for a long while, I liked it, but I really could not get used to whipping out my phone every time I needed to check something related to Google.
I've had other hiccups such as mobile provider down, phone died etc. Maybe my best option was to keep all the backup codes on hard plastic with checkmarks next to used backup codes and secure them the same way I do my banking cards, maybe, I'll just try this one day.
If one is going to jump through all these spy-style codes might as well just change your password on a regular basis, forcing all previous sessions to invalidate.
Re: Make Your Email Hacker Proof
#9What happens when you travel abroad and your phone does not work? I am wondering if Gmail could implement security questions to avoid cases where the 2-step verification works against the user
Ironical as it may be and as the author mentioned briefly in the article, "there is an app for that". Google provides an authentication app for at least Android and iOS.
I personally put my phone in "airplane mode" for the trip (still waiting for that market changing deal where you can travel easily across the globe and call/use data without being robbed by your provider) then use the authentication app. I also carry my authentication codes during the trip and they should be enough for even a longer trip, if not, I can generate new security codes during the trip using the security codes I already have with me.
Re: Make Your Email Hacker Proof
#10I think this is great, but it doesnt appear to be enabled for the freebie google apps for domains service.