It's frightening how reliant we are on our phones

[Smeghead]

Just a warning, this is mainly a bit of a rant, but it's genuinely quite scary how reliant we are now on our phones.

The other day, my main phone died out of the blue. Completely bricked. Even plugging it in it doesn't respond. So I get my backup phone (which is now very old and barely functional). I get it all set up again from scratch, which is a complete pain because of so much 2FA now.

• My password are all locked in my password manager. Luckily I had my backup keys written down and at hand to change the 2FA method on desktop, because otherwise I would be well and truly royally stuffed at square one.
• I try to set up Authy...I can't remember the details. Yes, 100% my fault, and luckily I don't have much set up there, but I struggle to find any written down notes I may have done, and I can't find any other secure notes on a device. I leave it for now.
• I try to set up my messaging apps - one of them is being troublesome and not logging in. I try to log in with their usual method and wait for an SMS verification code, nothing comes through. Apparently, after Googling, login sessions are locked to specific devices. I go through account recovery and use my username/password I set up to login instead, it doesn't work. I do another recovery method, and they need me to ask 2 people who are already logged in to send me a message of some verification number. I lose patience and leave it.
• I remember the last time I changed phones, my banking app needed me to actually ring them to set up my new device. So my entire bank account is locked behind my phone. I leave it as something to look forward to do later.
• Funny timing, but my backup phone has literally just now died today. The battery had already degraded to the point of dropping like 20% in a few hours, but I suddenly saw the battery drop to 0, even though it was plugged in, and now just bootloops. Just my luck.
• I'm now in a bit of a panic and go to the closest stores to me right now (at work) to buy a new phone. They don't have the colour I want in stock, so I come back to the office and check stock online. I see it at one near my house. I try to buy it....and I started laughing as the purchase wanted me to log into the app to approve the purchase.

All this 2FA is a double edged sword. Yes, it's more secure, but God forbid you ever lose your device, because it's not even funny how much of a pain in the ass this all is right now. Thank God I don't go the whole hog and tie my bank cards to my phone and don't bring a wallet with me or anything like that.

 

[Smeghead]

This is why backup codes exist. It's not really a problem if you keep copies of the codes. It's when you set up 2fa and dont bother copying the codes that it becomes a problem.

Some of this stuff never gives you a backup code though. My banking and credit card apps, of all things, I've never been given backup codes. They just tie it to the device, or you get an SMS or whatever else verification code and verify that way.