- Today I'm gonna be walking you step by step
through how to set up Google Authenticator
on your mobile devices for two-factor authentication.
Let's get this done.
(futuristic music)
Welcome to All Things Secured.
My name's Josh, and this is Tech Tip Tuesday,
the segment of this channel
where I walk you through the most important steps
that you can take in five minutes or less
to increase your security and privacy.
What I'm gonna be showing you today
I'm gonna show you on my iPad,
but this can be done on any tablet or phone,
whether that's your iPad, your iPhone,
or even an Android device,
it's gonna look exactly the same
so don't worry if you're not doing it
on the exact same device that I am.
The first thing that I wanna do
is I wanna go into my App Store here
and I wanna look for an authenticator.
Now what you're gonna find
is there are a number of authenticators to choose from.
Microsoft has an authenticator,
LastPass that is just an authenticator app,
but I recommend Google's authenticator
because it's the standard for Google app,
for any authenticator app.
Once you've downloaded it, click on Open,
and you're gonna see it's a very simple app.
It's not very complicated.
If I click on the Begin Setup,
you're gonna see that it asks me
to either scan a barcode or manually enter a code.
This is where we need to go into one of our accounts.
And in this example,
I wanna show you how I would do this for Facebook
because I've already done an entire video
on how to set up your privacy on Facebook,
which you can watch here, but let's go ahead.
If I go into my account,
I'm gonna go into Settings & Privacy, click on Settings,
and then we're gonna look for Security and Login.
Once you get to this point,
scroll down to the Two-Factor Authentication,
and we're gonna click Edit.
Now there are a number of ways
that you can set up two-factor authentication.
You can use SMS texting.
This is something that I don't recommend though.
I highly recommend you either use an authenticator app
like Google Authenticator,
or if you wanna use a key like YubiKey
or the Titan Security Key,
those are also really good options.
If I wanna set up the authenticator app,
you're gonna see here I can click on Use Authentication App
and it's gonna come up with what's known as a QR code.
That's those boxes that have a lot of different ways
that it sets out, I don't know how you describe a QR code,
but you click on Scan Barcode here with my iPad
and I am going to scan that barcode.
What you're gonna see here on my iPad
is that I've got a six-digit number.
This six-digit number refreshes every 20 seconds,
and that means that I can show you this number
and it doesn't really pose a security risk to me right now
because that's gonna change every time,
and you can try to use this
if you want to hack into my account,
but it's not gonna work.
So how would this work in real life?
Let's say I wanted to login to Facebook.
When I do, when I login to Facebook
after I've already logged out
and I enter in my password and my username,
it's also going to ask
for that second level of authentication,
that two-factor authentication.
For me, as we've already done this setup,
that's gonna come from my Google Authenticator app.
So I'm gonna open up the authenticator app,
and this is, just for a note,
one of the reasons why I would rather have this
on my phone than my iPad,
because I always have my phone with me.
I don't always have my iPad right next to me.
So if you're thinking about where you should download
and install the Google Authenticator app,
I recommend you do it on your phone and not your iPad
or some device that's not always with you.
So when I enter in, when it asks me for that code,
I'm gonna open up the authenticator
and as you see here, it says 019 970.
I'm gonna go ahead and enter that in, 970, and click Enter.
And now Facebook's going to let me in.
I have proven that I am who I say I am,
and now I have access to my Facebook account.
It's really that easy.
And the great thing about the Google Authenticator app
or any authenticator app for that matter
is that you can have a number of different logins.
So on my phone, this Google Authenticator app
actually has eight different codes
that are being shown at the same time
and I just need to scroll through
and find the right one and enter that code in
when I'm asked for the code.
What that means is you can use it for Facebook,
you can use it for Twitter, your investment accounts.
Anything that allows for two-factor authentication
using an authentication app, you should definitely do that.
And that's what is gonna be shown
when you open up your authenticator app.
Now if you want other great tips like this for tech,
you can look at this playlist that we have here.
Any questions that you have
about the Google Authenticator app
can be left in the comments below.
I hope you enjoy this video,
give it a thumbs up, and thanks for watching.