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Tom’s Guide
Tom’s Guide
Technology
Amber Bouman

Two-factor authentication provides an easy way to secure your accounts — here's how it works and how to enable it

Cropped hand of woman using mobile device with Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) security while logging in securely to her laptop.

Passwords are the worst. They can be cracked, forced open in attacked, guessed, reused, sold in data breaches, created with weak practices and stored poorly even when the best password managers are available.

Having an insecure password leaves you open to having your account breached, your data stolen, your personal information sold and a variety of malicious actions taken against your data and your devices. It can take a long time and tons of effort to recover from, but the good news is that two-factor (and multi-factor) authentication provides an extra layer of security to accounts that offer it.

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