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Remind HN: Make Backups for 2FA

12 points by qntty ↗ HN
My phone died unexpected yesterday morning (unrecoverable random hardware failure). This means that if I hadn't bothered to make backup codes a few years ago for my google account, I would have been locked out of signing in through the authentication app (installed only on my phone) and through text-based authentication codes, because I use project fi and I don't have another compatible phone that I could put my sim card in.

Just a reminder of the frustrating situations that some of you might find yourself in if you use 2FA the same way I do.

6 comments

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eicnix
2FA recovery codes are one of the few things I print out just because of the implication when the backup failed like in your case.
FT_intern
Is this enough redundancy? I can see a natural disaster wiping out your residence and losing both the paper copies and your phone.
mataniko
I actually use an older iPhone that sits in a drawer as a secondary 2FA device. Just scan the barcode on both devices and you have a good backup to help recover accounts that don't provide printable codes.
akoster
I do similarly and also print out barcodes/recovery keys and put them in a safe place in case all else fails. Echoing some wise words from this post [1], insure your backup solution can be restored. I tend to test the QR code on my primary phone, print out a few copies for safe keeping, and then read the QR code from the printout into Ng backup phone.

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13551905

hannibalhorn
I keep all my 2FA stuff in 1Password, with all my crazy long passwords and random answers to security questions. Unfortunately doesn't work with Authy (used by Cloudflare) so that's separate, but they allow recovery via your phone number anyway. I also do some extra daily backups of my 1Password database, GPG encrypted and stored online, just in case.