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1) By definition, if your 2FA device gets stolen, you’re screwed anyway. Goodbye Authenticator. At least with SMS you can get the same number by contacting your
by lakpan 3y ago
1) By definition, if your 2FA device gets stolen, you’re screwed anyway. Goodbye Authenticator. At least with SMS you can get the same number by contacting your carrier.
2) Roaming. Often free to receive texts abroad.
3) True
4) True, but it’s easy to keep it active assuming you at least have data on it
5) True, but it can cost peanuts with the right setup. I’m holding onto my European and Thai SIM cards with less than $5/year. My Google Voice number is free since 2009.
I agree I’d just prefer using Authenticator and Passkeys, but let’s not lie about the advantages of SMS.
- pitaj 3y agoGoogle Authenticator backs up to your Google account now, somehow. Not sure exactly how that works.
- lakpan 3y agoThe problem is logging into your Google account without your 2FA device or phone number. The answer in all these cases is having more than one option enabled. I just recently tested my Google and Apple login simulating a loss of phone and computer. It was tough but there are options (e.g. Apple lets a friend be your full 2FA, so you can even recover encrypted data)
- tim333 3y agoI always back up the codes for the Google Auth stuff. They are just strings like VN3WBOTLQZUDFIWG You can put them in a doc / email them to yourself / whatever.
- tim333 3y agoGoogle have not been very good with that. For a long time they didn't back up at all which meant if you swapped phones and didn't manually copy over you lost the codes. Now if you click the default OK button if copies all the codes to Google cloud which is ok if you don't have much money being protected but if you do there's a vulnerability that hacking your Google account gets your TOTP codes and probably passwords if you save them in Chrome. I'm currently in that situation and will probably shift to some other provider so it becomes two things to hack rather than one again.
- Saris 3y agoFor 1), you just restore a backup of your TOTP codes, or use backup codes.