Today on Dotto Tech, we're going to take a look at Google authenticator utility that
allows us to run two factor authentication using our smartphone or our tablets as our
second factor of authentication in allowing us greater security when we're logging into
online services.
This is topical and this is a very important tool to learn to you here.
How the heck are you doing this fine day and Donald Tech, we make technology easy so you
can do more.
Now the topic today is Google authenticator, which is a tool that will allow us to more
effectively manage two factor authentication.
Once again, I'll repeat two.
Factor authentication is simply the way that we protect our privacy and our security more
effectively online by requiring two different credentials in order to sign in to online
accounts.
You enter your username and password online, but then before that the site lets you in.
They asked for verification usually as a text sent to your phone or some other communication
that only you can have because only you have the device that's required for the second
factor, which is most often your smartphone.
Now, using a tool like google authenticator, you could automatically generate these codes,
meaning that the site that you're talking to, that you're signing into doesn't have
to send you a code to like text you a code for you to enter the site.
Instead, you can generate the code automatically on your smartphone.
Now this does several things for you.
One, it removes the need of you sharing your phone number with whatever site you're signing
into, which is a big deal, but an even bigger deal is it allows you to access your account
even when you are not necessarily online with your smartphone.
So let's dive in and let me show you how it all fits.
I'm going to start things out for your on my smartphone and I'm going to show you the
authenticator APP.
You can download it and it works identically regardless if you're in windows or your, sorry.
If you're an android or the ios operating system and the authenticator APP will work
on any tablet and on any mobile device so you can use it on your tablet as well as on
your smartphone.
Now the authenticator app itself is a very, very kind of almost pedestrian it looking
at, this is how it looks.
When you go to sign into a new account, you will then choose the account sign in information
from the authenticator app here that you have, and this is a constantly changing.
You see how it's turned red, it's timing out and now it's changing the sequence.
It's changing the numbers that you need to access whichever accounts it's signed up for.
Now, let me walk you through the process of configuring authenticator because it's really
easy to do.
You start by logging into whatever account it is that you want to set up two factor authentication
for.
If it allows for two factor authentication such as my stripe account that you see here,
then you can enable two factor authentication and ask it to pair your authenticator device
with your account and it does so using the vastly under utilized qr code.
All you do is you launch the authenticator app, tell it that you want to add a site,
you highlight the site or you focus the Qr code with a camera and it automatically registers.
That's it, it's done, so now on my smartphone, the qr codes are constantly changing and it's
linked to my in this case stripe account.
Now, if you've got multiple devices that you want to use our authenticator with, if you
want to have it say on your tablet as well as on your phone before you close this window,
you would then use your tablet and you would capture it and use the same qr code to sync
that device and then all of your devices will be in sync.
So now when you go to sign in, you see the, you see the process, they send you a, they
ask you what your authenticator key is.
You type in that number and your entered into the account.
It's not a 1000 percent.
I don't even turn it 100 percent flawless.
There are probably still ways that hackers can get past this level of security, but we
don't typically speaking, we don't have any better at level of security that we can use.
So I encourage you to do this.
Now, why is it important to do this on all of our accounts?
One of the things that's just recently happened is facebook, of course I had a recent breach
and this is something that just unbelievably has made me ever so angry.
Not only did facebook have a breach were 50 million accounts were compromised, but in
the light of that we learn I'm just going to sign into my settings here in facebook
and change my account over as we are speaking.
We learned in the, in the kind of in the followup from this that facebook has been sharing our
phone numbers or using our phone numbers for marketing purposes.
The phone numbers that we use for two factor authentication.
So here they tell us and they encourage us to use two factor authentication.
I'm going to go in and edit mine right now and they've been taking in marketing to us
using the phone number that we shared with them.
I find that to be completely
disingenuous and is once again betrayed my trust and lowered my confidence and everything.
Facebook related.
So let us.
Before we are done, let us set up authenticator as an APP here for us as well, and I'm going
to add an authenticator APP.
I'm going to add it now to my smartphone.
Up comes the scan barcode and I am a boat.
Add My facebook account here.
Click next into the confirmation code, which I have right here too.
Eight, three, five, three,
six.
Oh, I might've missed it.
Well, I just got it in in time.
Okay.
Because it changed here.
All right, so that's done.
The key here is make sure that you embrace two factor authentication using Google authenticator
or one of the other good authenticator apps.
Protect your privacy, protect your security.
Uh, as best you can.
End Two.
Factor authentication is a great first step.
Now, before we wrap up today, I'd love to hear your thoughts and your comments in the
comments below, especially.
I'd love to hear what your thoughts are about facebook using our phone numbers to market
to us.
Take advantage and rant a little bit.
I love reading your comments and suggestions.
So please post below.
I do read every single one.
If you like this video, please give it a like and share it with your friends or colleagues
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And if you have time, check out some of our other videos right over there.
Till next time.
I'm Steve Dotto.
Have Fun.
Storming the castle.