Two Factor\/Multifactor Authentication can help keep you safe.<\/p>\n
The bad guys are out to get you. They\u2019re phishing in your email, they are using brute force to try to get your password so they can log into your email accounts, your Microsoft Accounts, your Google accounts, Facebook, Twitter, and just about everywhere that you use a password to log in. Having a strong and unique password for every site and account isn\u2019t enough these days. You CAN do more to protect yourself. There PROBABLY ARE baddies trying to break into your accounts right now. It\u2019s a fact of life. Want an example? I was amazed at the number of unique IP\u2019s trying to gain administrative access to the WordPress dashboard on one of my blogs by trying to login through the WordPress interface. And I was horrified.<\/p>\n
What can you do to protect yourself? My advice is simply \u2018if you don\u2019t have 2FA enabled, enable it now if you possibly can\u2019<\/strong>. (And if you are one of the folks that still doesn\u2019t have a smartphone, consider a physical device like Yubikey<\/a>\u2019s devices. Microsoft blogged<\/a> about using this product for Windows Hello as well.) I won\u2019t cover using these devices in this article, but be aware that if you don\u2019t have a smartphone, you do have an option.) Note that, in some cases,\u00a0you can use a secondary email address as an option to SMS or Yubikey, but it isn’t as secure and I don\u2019t recommend it.<\/p>\n Two Factor Authentication (2FA) relies on something you know (like a strong password) and something you have (like a cellphone\/smartphone) to help secure your email, online email and social media accounts, etc. There are additional ways to use 2FA, and you can read more about this at Wikipedia<\/a>, Microsoft<\/a>, and there\u2019s a particularly good write up at Google<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And Microsoft has a video:<\/p>\n