Today's question is, what is two-factor authentication and
why should I care about it?
Does it really help protect me from hackers?
The answer is yes.
Two-factor authentication absolutely does give you much
better protection against hackers.
So let's talk about what it is and why you should turn it on.
If you are working for a company, they might
provide it for you.
But Google will provide you with two-factor authentication
on your Gmail account if you want it.
Here's why you might want to think about it.
A normal password is something you know.
But if somebody guesses that, they could log in from Russia,
or China, or Bulgaria, or wherever.
They could get access to documents.
They could get access to the stuff that you
have stored in Gmail.
And that's pretty scary.
Two-factor authentication is something you know, like your
password, and something you have. So in this case, you
might, for example, configure your smartphone to be able to
return a little pin.
And that might be a six-digit number that you just type in.
And then, OK, not only do you know the password, but you
also have this time-limited pin.
And so Google knows to trust you.
Now there's a lot of people who are like, well this sounds
like a lot of hassle.
Or they're pointing out the various corner cases.
So let me walk you through it.
I have had at least two relatives have their Gmail
account get hacked because they
didn't pick a good password.
And so people are logging in from other countries, and
they're trying to do various things.
If you will turn on two-factor authentication, then you don't
need to worry about that.
Because whoever the hacker is, he doesn't have your phone.
So he's not able to guess what your one-time pin is.
And so you're much more protected.
Now let's walk through a lot of the concerns that people
have. Some people are like, well I don't want to type in a
pin every time I login.
That's great.
Because you can set a little checkbox that says remember me
for 30 days.
And so only once a month do you have to generate the pin
and type it in.
Some people will say, well, but what if I'm in a foreign
country, or what if I don't have cell phone service?
That's OK.
This application runs on your smartphone.
But it doesn't have to have cellphone service.
It's based on time, so that over a limited window, this
pin will work.
And then another pin will start working.
And so you don't have to have cell phone service.
It's OK if you're in another country.
Some people are like, well what if I lose my phone?
That's OK too.
There are little one-time codes that you can print out
on paper and put in your wallet.
Then people say, well what if I forget about my phone
number, and I switch to a different phone, or
something like that?
That's OK.
You can designate a backup phone number, where people can
either send a text or they can actually automatically call
and read off the number for you.
Some people are like, oh, well, what if this is
proprietary, and it's not based on standards?
That's OK.
It's open source, and it's based on open standards.
So I pretty much guarantee almost any given reservation
that you have about whether you would be able to use this
as your solution, they've pretty much taken care of all
those weird corner cases.
So I have it on my phone.
I would not trust my Gmail account without having
two-factor authentication.
It just makes your system that much more secure.
It's very little extra work.
There's all kinds of ways to make it even faster.
And I would just really recommend that
everybody get it.
If everybody would turn on two-factor authentication,
we'd have much less of a problem with accounts getting
hijacked, people's sites getting hacked.
Because your Gmail can be the source of a lot of
information.
And so if your Gmail gets hacked, then people might get
access to your domain name, or your other
services, your bank.
So you really should have a lot of protection on your
Gmail account.
And the Gmail guys do a lot of different things to say, OK,
here's a login from a different country, or there
are ways to see the most recent account activity.
But the really big one is this two-factor authentication.
So it's a little, tiny bit more hassle.
But if you're willing to turn it on, then you get a lot more
protection.
I just feel like I'd be sort of naked out on the internet
if I didn't have this sort of protection.
And I really think everybody should turn it
on, including you.
So please consider it.
I think that we have a video down in the metadata, where we
can link to, that gives you a lot more information
about how it works.
There are all kinds of ways where you can set up
application-specific passwords.
So if you really want to do IMAP or POP and have access to
your email without having to re-authenticate every 30 days,
there are ways to do it.
But if you just spend a little bit of time learning about it
and how it works, I guarantee you'll be much more protected.
So the next time somebody gets hacked, it won't be you.