If you work online and you are an affiliate is important that you keep all your login secure, 2fa also called two-factor authentication is something you need possibly everywhere.
A 2fa two factor authentication system will allow you to login to a website like Gmail for instance only if you put, e-mail, password and a special token that changes every 30 seconds linked to the CPU of your smartphone.
That way it will be a lot harder for hackers to hack into your account and potentially steal your information and money.
There are many apps and ways you can set up a 2FA these days on your phone! But here I am going to tell you the best way to do it so that you will avoid the possibility to get locked out of your accounts if you lose your phone and something unexpected happens.
THIS IS HOW YOU SECURE YOUR ACCOUNTS FOR GOOD! Click To Tweet
How To Set Up A 2FA
To set up a 2fa you will need a smartphone! The process is always the same:
- log-in into your account.
- verify the e-mail.
- find the two-factor authentication tab, is usually under ‘settings‘.
- scan the QR code with your phone from the 2FA app.
- save the backup codes.
You will be asked for that generated code each time you try to log-in into any accounts that are secured with two factor authentication.
So you might be asking what happens if you lose your phone or change your phone and something bad happens right?
If you are using Google Authenticator as suggested usually from the websites it will be a pain in the ass if something bad happens.
You will be able to log in only via the backup codes you saved after the creation of the 2fa! If you don’t have the backup codes saved you will not be able to log in.
Even if you get a new phone you would have to disable all the 2fa! Risk your security with no 2fa enabled and then re-activate the codes and saves new backup codes again. It is not cool!
But if you use Authy instead of Google authenticator you will not have these problems.
Best 2FA Apps To Secure Your Account With Two Steps
Authy For PC And Mobile App
Authy is the best app you should use for any account that asks for a google authenticator TOTP App.
The reason why you need to prefer this app to google authenticator is that with this app you will be able to create a backup of the tokens using your mobile number and a secret password.
You will be able to back up these codes if you installed the desktop app of authy on your PC or on another smartphone or even from the authy extension on the chrome web store.
For instance, I have Authy installed on my iPhone SE which is my main smartphone! Then I have passed the tokens to my MacBook PRO via the app and to another iPhone I have.
That way unless I loose these 3 devices at the same time I will never be locked out. I usually keep the other iPhone always at home!
When you install Authy on your computer or another smartphone, it will ask you if you want to recover from backup.
If you say yes it will send a request to the mobile number and email associated!
With this request, you will have your tokens back everywhere.
You will need to decrypt the whole thing with your Authy password.
So if you use authy and decide to get a new phone! All you have to do is installing Authy on the new device and transfer the token’s code via your computer that still has the old codes.
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE 'AUTHENTICATOR BACKUP' AND 'ALLOW MULTI-DEVICE' ENABLED FROM AUTHY SETTINGS. Click To Tweet
Google Authenticator
This is the first app that was able to create TOTP tokens! It is good but if you lose your phone you will not be able to restore the tokens and the only way to login to your account will be the backup codes when available.
I strongly advise you to use authy instead of Google authenticator. Every time you see the option to choose for an authenticator account it means that also authy will work perfectly.
The two apps below are Yandex Authenticator and Microsoft Authenticator. You will need to use these apps to create 2FA codes on Yandex and Microsoft.
You can not use authy for those! So for Microsoft account and Yandex follow the steps below.
Yandex Authenticator
If you are a webmaster and an affiliate you should be working with Google, Bing (Microsoft) and Yandex.
Yandex is the search engine used in Russia, and most of the Russian speaker and Russian countries use Yandex instead of Google.
It’s like Baidu for China but in Russia. If you don’t want to miss Russian traffic you will need a Yandex webmasters account and the best way to secure it is via the Yandex two factor authentication app for IOS.
Once you have an account with Yandex you will be able to create backup codes within the app linked to your mobile and email.
You will need to use this app for Yandex, authy will not work.
Microsoft Authenticator
Same here, with Bing / Microsoft there will be an app that works specifically for them. The app is pretty good and allows you to backup your tokens in many ways.
I have recently got a new phone and once I logged in the tokens were injected into my app from my iTunes backup as well. (if you have an iPhone encrypted backup only).
So yeah, no authy for Bing and Microsoft but their apps.
You can download it from the link below! And I advise you to go through all the settings and put all you need to put so that you don’t get locked out your Microsoft account.
Having a 2FA on Microsoft is very important. Microsoft is the one that controls Skype and Bing, and recently millions of Skype accounts got hacked since it’s pretty easy.
If you have the Microsoft Authenticator app on your account it will be very hard for hackers to hack your skype etc…
A lot of my friends got hacked recently! Russian hackers are always behind the corner trying to steal precious information from Microsoft Accounts.
The App You Should Use Instead Of Google Authenticator
So here I am going to tell you all the 2FAs that I have my self. I am using Authy for 95% of my two-step authentication codes!
Like: Crypto Exchanges, CDN, Hosting, Dropbox, affiliate networks, social media, WordPress, Banks.
I use a Microsoft authenticator app for my Microsoft account that is linked to Gmail actually but still Microsoft.
I have a Yandex authenticator app for my Yandex account!
As a bonus of extra security, I have Google Prompts! You can access it from the 2fa section of your Google account and a USB security key also.
Then I have my apple account secured with a two-factor authentication on multiple devices. 2 iPhones and 2 MacBook Pro.
Set Up A Two-factor Authentication On Google Account
A Google account is the one that will give you two-factor authentication for Gmail and all the Google services.
This is the most important one since if your main email is a Gmail like most of the people! If someone hacks into your Gmail, they can go to another website you have an account with and request to reset the password.
They will get a reset link in Gmail and they can hack into any accounts you own in a few seconds.
So make sure to have any degree of protection on your google account as well. I have prepared a short video you can follow on how to set up authy on Google. I hope that this will help you.
Store Your Backup Codes Somewhere Safe
As you can see in the video, I didn’t do it but you can enable Google Prompts from there! I am hovering the mouse a little bit around minute 0:49.
And then you need to download, screenshot and store your personal backup codes somewhere safe.
Something you should do is to print them and put them in a safe place in your house where no one will damage them.
Also, you can copy the backup codes files and store them on an external hard drive and your computer.
Conclusions
You must secure all of your accounts with a two-step authentication protection so that it will be hard for hackers to steal your info.
You must use Authy and connect it too multiple devices via your personal password and mobile number! So that you will never get locked out unless you lose all your devices at once.
The best way to be secure your mobile is to use Apple 2FA with IOS! Authy for 95% of the websites that require a TOTP app.
And then you will need to use Microsoft authenticator and Yandex authenticator for these services.
There is a video on how to set up authy on a google account! If you have some questions or some doubts about this topic just send me a message.
I recently changed my phone and I never wanted to change it because I was lazy to turn off all my 2FAs which are probably like 80.
But then, I have discovered Authy and I have just transferred all my google authenticator codes to it! I was able to have them all back on my new phone without having to disable and re-enable one by one and re-save all the backup codes, print them etc.. Click To Tweet
What You Will Learn On This Blog!
Stay tuned and subscribe to my blog so you will get notifications on new posts. I will slowly break down these topics:
- SEO(Search Engine Optimization).
- Affiliate Marketing.
- Free and Paid traffic hacks.
- Coding and WordPress
- Make money with a computer and an internet connection even while you sleep.
Follow me on social media, you’ve got all the links on the right bottom side of this blog, also comment and contact me if you need help.
Here are my top resources I always use to become a great affiliate, take a look here
Do you want to be a free man or woman? Jump in the crew then!
Much Love and Peace Out,
Marco Diversi.
thanks! Yeah Feel Free To Share It
Good information and very accurate for this technology. It’s very helpful.
lame comment