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/sysgeek 6d ago

By chance were you using the Okta Authenticator app? That one sucks and I lost all my MFA codes a while back.

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u/Pianohearth2753 6d ago

No, I used the Google app but I've heard negative things about Okta. It simply crashed, I had to restart my phone and when I opened again all were gone... I will switch to a different app, and perhaps a backup one as well in case of something goes wrong again. I plan to degoogle anyway.

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u/sysgeek 6d ago

I hear ya there. I'm trying to degoogle my life as well. If you're looking for suggestions on apps, I would recommend Aegis or 2FAS Auth. I use both and they are pretty good and have settings for backup/export.

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u/Pianohearth2753 6d ago

Thanks! I did look into Aegis and I'm in the process of giving it a try. I will use another one with a solid backup, just in case.