Two-factor authentication is one of life’s everyday little headaches. But it’s world’s better than one of life’s everyday big headaches: captchas. If one more website asks me to identify all the fire hydrants or buses in a series of pictures, I swear…
They make me feel like I’m being held hostage by the Burger King Kids Club and being made to “find the image that’s different” on a bunch of placemats, over and over and over. I’ll take a good two-factor authentication (2FA) app over a captcha any day.
Not that a lot of websites give you a choice. Sometimes you have to use one. Google Authenticator and Microsoft Authenticator are both solid choices, although I’d say that for people who really want to lock down their account access from any big business should move to Proton’s new 2FA app.
an option by a trusted brand
I’m a big fan of Proton. Proton VPN is one of the best virtual private networks out there and flat-out the best free VPN I’ve ever used. Like any good VPN, they regularly open up their products to independent review and appraisal, sharing the results with the public as a good-faith show of transparency that they’re not hiding behind any fake promises.
Simply put, it’s my job to be skeptical of digital security promises and products, and I feel perfectly safe using Proton. That they’ve come out with a 2FA makes perfect sense, as Proton seems to be building out the most comprehensive suite of privacy products—VPN, secure mail, password manager, calendar, cloud storage, etc.—of all the top-tier VPN companies.
Whereas most 2FA apps, such as Google Authenticator and Microsoft Authenticator, only work on iOS and Android, Proton Authenticator has apps for iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, and Linux.
Also unlike those apps, Proton Authenticator is open-source, making it more transparent. And transparency, in this industry, means credibility and trust.
The post Don’t Trust Google or Microsoft as Your 2FA App? Check Out Proton. appeared first on VICE.
