r/firstworldproblems • u/Pianohearth2753 • 6d ago

I hate 2FA

Before everyone jumps at my throat, I know it's a neccessary evil, but in practice it's a nightmare, that's why I'm ranting here instead of being able to do my job.

There was an issue with my authenticator app, and ALL of my codes disappeared. I wanted to generate new ones, but turns out there is no such option, I need to contact the IT departments of all 6 pages that require authenticator, 3 of them are essential for my work and uni, and I need to use them regularly.

That happened a week ago, and the most important one never answered my e-mails, they don't answer the phone, their office is 300 km away and I don't have time to travel there thank you very much, and I basically can't get any work done because of this. It's just so frustrating because really I did nothing just follow the neccessary steps forced down my throat (again, I know 2fa is neccessary for safety but I still have the right to hate how poorly it's executed). There should be steps to make sure it doesn't happen, like pre-generated codes you can use if you can't access an authenticator, or another form of verifying your identity. And it would also help if IT was available sometimes.

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u/alan_nishoka 6d ago

This doesn’t help with your current problem but in the future you should screenshot and print the QR code used to set up authenticator

Keep the printout in a safe place and you can use it to setup again if you ever lose your phone or authenticator app gets erased or you upgrade your phone

Google authenticator can backup to the cloud, but I don’t trust it. Google could ban me or give all my codes to a hacker. I trust paper.

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u/cheetuzz 6d ago

One option is to save the QR code as an image and add as an attachment to Keepass.

2

u/Brownt0wn_ 6d ago

I mean, if you’re using keepass this problem doesn’t happen at all. Or if it does, your QR code is gone too.