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It was not in my case. I found out about this feature when I saw the green cloud icon and pressed it to find out what it meant. At that time I was made aware th

It was not in my case. I found out about this feature when I saw the green cloud icon and pressed it to find out what it meant. At that time I was made aware the my data was saved in my Google account.

sangnoir 3y ago
It's likely your company's administrator forced this default behavior. Cloud sync was an opt-in on my account too, fwiw. It would have been a huge story had it been opt-out.
- cmiles74 3y ago
  TLDR: From what I can tell, the "consent" to cloud backup from Google Authenticator was misleading at best and blocked access to the tool until it was given. IMHO this is another example of Google forcing decisions on customers in order to extract even more data. Thumbs down! It looks like Google didn't make clear what was happening... There are almost no settings in Authenticator and there is no place to turn "cloud backup" on or off. I found this article that described the feature when it rolled out. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-authenticator-now-backs-up-your-2fa-codes-to-the-cloud/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-authenti... If the screenshot is accurate, they blocked access to the tool until "consent" was given to backup codes to Google. The text itself is clear in retrospect but, in my opinion, implies that there will be a choice to backup to Google and that choice was never presented. "Google Authenticator is Upgrading... You can now sign into your Google Account and backup your Google Authenticator codes to the cloud." A button is presented labeled "Get Started" and, if you click it, Authenticator will backup all of your codes to the cloud. I don't remember being presented with this screen but I don't remember a lot of things. I suspect I needed to get a code and simply clicked the button to get to the list of codes. If I read it, I likely thought there was a new setting and I could manage this "backing up" from there. Clearly this was not the case and I "consented" to let Google have all of by 2FA codes.

sangnoir 3y ago

It's likely your company's administrator forced this default behavior. Cloud sync was an opt-in on my account too, fwiw. It would have been a huge story had it been opt-out.

cmiles74 3y ago
TLDR: From what I can tell, the "consent" to cloud backup from Google Authenticator was misleading at best and blocked access to the tool until it was given. IMHO this is another example of Google forcing decisions on customers in order to extract even more data. Thumbs down! It looks like Google didn't make clear what was happening... There are almost no settings in Authenticator and there is no place to turn "cloud backup" on or off. I found this article that described the feature when it rolled out. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-authenticator-now-backs-up-your-2fa-codes-to-the-cloud/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-authenti... If the screenshot is accurate, they blocked access to the tool until "consent" was given to backup codes to Google. The text itself is clear in retrospect but, in my opinion, implies that there will be a choice to backup to Google and that choice was never presented. "Google Authenticator is Upgrading... You can now sign into your Google Account and backup your Google Authenticator codes to the cloud." A button is presented labeled "Get Started" and, if you click it, Authenticator will backup all of your codes to the cloud. I don't remember being presented with this screen but I don't remember a lot of things. I suspect I needed to get a code and simply clicked the button to get to the list of codes. If I read it, I likely thought there was a new setting and I could manage this "backing up" from there. Clearly this was not the case and I "consented" to let Google have all of by 2FA codes.