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I was blown away when I discovered that there was no way for me to export my Google Authenticator TOTP secrets from my locked Android phone, since unlocking it
by mquander 7y ago
I was blown away when I discovered that there was no way for me to export my Google Authenticator TOTP secrets from my locked Android phone, since unlocking it wipes the disk. I guess I will not make the mistake of not immediately unlocking an Android phone again.
- winrid 7y agoSo what do you do? How did you get your account back?
- paulie_a 7y agoI ran into a similar issue. I had 1100 dollars in an account secured by authenticator and did not save the recovery codes when I set it up. I had to jump through hoops to get it back, which is good. But I didnt realize I would have to reset up every single code on authenticator on the new phone. When you have a lot of accounts it's pretty obnoxious even with recovery codes. It didnt help that google support directly told me that they would be automatically be restored on the new phone along with the rest of the settings.
- jarfil 7y agoYou can save the TOTP secret on your own when setting the Authenticator. Usually you have a choice between a QR code and a text, just save the text to your separate "account recovery" database in your password manager, then set the phone with the QR. I do that with any service not offering recovery codes for their 2FA (shame on you).
- mNovak 7y agoLikewise, it was not fun when my phone with GA suprise died. Many services with 2FA do not provide backup codes. I switched over to Authy for this reason--they allow an encrypted backup of the TOTP secrets.