As our lives are getting increasingly dependent on web based services, they are getting prone to hackers (crackers). There is a recent case of a web based company which was virtually forced to shut down its operation after the hacker was able to gain access to its backend and servers.
While no one can guarantee 100% safety against a malicious hacker, there are some precautions you can take to protect yourself online. One of the most important among them is 2 Factor Authentication(2FA) and you need not be a geek to enable this. Had the above company been a little prudent and enabled 2FA, I’m sure they would not have met with such a fate.
What is 2 Factor Authentication?
In simple words 2FA provides a 2nd layer of password on top of your regular password for a given web application. This second password is normally either SMS-ed to you at the time of login OR it is configured in an application which is stored on your mobile phone. Except a couple of cases – which involved Social Engineering – I have not really heard some one getting hacked after enabling 2FA.
9 Important Services
Here are some commonly used important services where you can enable 2FA. Check the documentation link for the step-by-step procedure.
- Google Services (Gmail, Drive, YouTube): Documentation. If you use Gmail for business purposes, take a backup of Gmail using Spanning backup service.
- Yahoo: Documentation
- Outlook: Documentation
- FaceBook: Documentation
- LinkedIn: Documentation
- Dropbox: Documentation
- Amazon S3: Documentation
- Apple: Documentation
- PayPal: Documentation (Only available for US based customers)
Also check a comprehensive list by twofactorauth which provides a category wise list of all services providing two factor authentication.
Ankur Jain is a Software Engineer in Test Automation. After a 5 years stint with Accenture and Oracle, he started his eLearning company. A long-time blogger and proud owner of the "Learn" series of websites. 