Live data from Hacker News

Please turn on two-factor authentication

mattcutts.com

51–60 of 262 posts

Re: Please turn on two-factor authentication

#51

Am I the only person in the world who doesn't have a cell phone? It annoys me that the two-factor auth setups at sites (like Google) assume I have one and don't even have an option for "I don't have a cell phone, please stop nagging me about this."

Why are you the only person in the world who doesn't have a cell phone? Why would you assume that super-large companies would consider your single-person use-case?

Re: Please turn on two-factor authentication

#53
post #31

I was worried this would be a major pain when I enabled it, but I have to say, it has been much more painless than I thought it would be. Most of the time, I don't even think about it. Most of my consumption of google mail is through clients on my laptops, iPhone, or iPad. So in that sense, it's not much different from a regular password. The difference is that someone else has a much harder time cracking my account.…

Same here, I just enabled it a few days back and it's much easier than I imagined it would be.

Re: Please turn on two-factor authentication

#54
really surprised so many people that post here refuse to use google authenticator because its "annoying." is it a hassle? yes, but if you have ever had your email (and other accounts) compromised you understand why it is worth that small 5 second hassle when you login.

one feature that i cannot understand why it hasnt been implemented though is protecting the app itself with a password or pin. some people say to just protect your whole phone, but i dont really want to do that because to me that _is_ too large a hassle. if i lose my phone i can revoke access to my email and other similar apps, but not if the person that finds it opens up google authenticator (which shows the account the id is used for) and logs in to change the password before i have a chance to. even just allowing for it to display an account nickname instead of full login would be a huge step forward

Re: Please turn on two-factor authentication

#56
post #45
post #37

I've been avoiding doing this, and I'm not certain the reason is valid - I don't want Google to have my mobile phone number. Perhaps I'm being overly cautious, but the fact Google already collects such a huge amount of data on me, coupled with the increasing insistent requests to enable two-factor with my mobile phone number, has made me not do it. I got so sick of being pestered about it that I stopped using Gmail a…

You don't need to enter your phone number to use Google's two factor. You can use their smartphone application to generate codes. If you don't want to do that, the algorithm is free and open-source so you can probably find an alternate implementation that works fine.

Unless I am mistaken, they won't let you do two-factor auth at all unless you put a phone number first.

Re: Please turn on two-factor authentication

#57
post #41
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, is that 5-minutes-to-print an edge case or a more than occasional situation? If the latter, how hard is it to create an alternate email account in which you send non-confidential emails/docs on the spur of a moment? If it's an edge case, it seems like a trivial one for reducing your security so much. As your documented online data grows, the chance of being hacked only grows. And once you've been hacked, there'…

Yeah, yeah, I should probably turn it on. And while I'm at it, I should probably eat more vegetables, less red meat and go to the gym. But I don't see those happening either ;). Seriously though, when you have to enter the PIN multiple times a day, it gets annoying.

If you're entering it multiple times a day due to using public machines then you really, really should be using two-factor auth as many systems you use may be compromised in one way or another.

Re: Please turn on two-factor authentication

#58
post #6

I did this a few months ago, but I'm thinking of turning it off. I know it's trivial, but there's something deeply annoying about being dinged $0.20 a pop for the SMS message to get the code. I'll have to see if I can set up the Google Authenticator; I hadn't heard of that before.

You pay for incoming SMS? How does that even work?

Re: Please turn on two-factor authentication

#59
Is there a way to use a separate hardware device? Using my phone as the second factor is nice, but my phone is vulnerable to theft because of its value for resale.

A sealed gizmo that shows a number just looks like an el-cheapo souvenier. Without knowing my username and password too, it really is worthless.

Re: Please turn on two-factor authentication

#60

I'm sure someone is probably working on this, but what about a service that generates a one off seed for the second stage of auth, married with either a desktop or smartphone app for generating it for the user. Lose your phone/laptop/PC simply cancel it remotely so it stops generating, same as you would if you lost your bank card. I'm sure I'm missing something, but I'm not sure what. EDIT: I'll let the post stand bu…

You can actually authenticate against the GA product from any system - hook it into PAM for sshd access, use it for another factor in OpenVPN, or even just wire it into Apache:

http://code.google.com/p/google-authenticator-apache-module/

Post reply on HN