Nowadays, with Online Banking, Cryptocurrencies, private data storage and other stuff, that needs to be secured, yo'll need to have a password. But what if that isn't secure enough for you? I mean your account can still get hacked. For that purpose Two Factor Authentification was build, which prevents people from getting into your accounts without permission
But How?
Two factor Authentification works by, as the name already tells, combining two different types of athentification. Most often these are the following:
- Something only you know (passwords)
- Something only you have(password keychains, finger-print, iris-pattern, mobile phone)
The most commonly used one of the second category is a mobile phone, as nearly everybody already owns one and doesn't have to buy a sensor for it. So let's dive further into how that method works.
Mobile Authentification
To use mobile authentification you'll first of all need an App that is made to work with as many sites as possible. I'd recommend the google authenticator, as it's pretty commonly used. But now finaly how it work:
If you sign into a site with your password, you'll get asked to sign in a certain(with most apps 6 digit) pin, that get randomly generated every few seconds, before a timer for that code runs out(if you are to slow you can just use the next one).
This code will be shown in the app on your phone. Meaning, that if anyone would find out your password, they'd still need your phone. And I think you are clever enough to not just give away your phone to random people.
Conclusion
2FA is something very usefull that you should definitely use. Espacially if you use password managers, as these should be as secure as possible.