From Google Authenticator to Authy
Hey all,
Over the past few years, 2FA became a standard. Ultimately I've been authenticating myself with Google Authenticator by default and I haven't had any issue with it. I remember I've been playing with Authy in the past but did not stick with it. More recently I was facing 2 main issues with Google Authenticator. The first one was the fact I was constantly needed to have my phone with me the second was the fact that I realized that losing my phone could have been resulting in some trouble. A mechanism exists to recover your account if your phone gets lost or stolen it's lost backup codes however I noticed I did not do that and I would have been a hard time getting access to my account without it. This is why I decided to make the switch from Google Authenticator to Authy.
Authy the good alternative
You may wonder why Authy instead of Google Authenticator. In my daily usage, the main advantages were the following.
Multi-device support:
- Smartphone
- PC
Basically, if you set 2FA on one of your devices codes will sync across all of your devices.
If you lose or get one device stolen you can still have access from another device which is huge to me.
Another big point to me is the multi-operating system support. I have an Android device for my smartphone, at work I work on Mac OS, and on my personal computers for personal use PC and laptop, I run Linux Solus distribution. Now I'm always trying to have the software I can use in every environment I work with that way I'm used to working with them.
Authy runs everywhere
You can get Authy there
If you choose Linux you'll be redirected to snapcraft, so Authy is available through snap here:
Twilio Authy
Also, note there was a browser extension on Authy that could fall into the all operating system section but browser extensions are now deprecated and not recommended to be used. So I recommend using a version from the Authy Download section directly
The only issue I faced while doing my migration was the fact I was forced to basically disabled 2FA and re-enable it on every single service I was using 2FA. This is a pain and I'll love to be able to migrate this is on click in the future. Out of this is now a pleasure to get access to my code directly from my computer with Authy working out of the box in Linux.
Hope you'll make the switch if you found out Authy could fit a little bit more your needs.
That sits for today, stay secure!