{"id":2337,"date":"2016-10-25T12:39:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-25T12:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.trusted-id.eu\/nieuws\/what-is-2fa-and-why-is-it-so-important\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T15:03:03","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T15:03:03","slug":"what-is-2fa-and-why-is-it-so-important","status":"publish","type":"nieuws","link":"https:\/\/www.trusted-id.eu\/en\/nieuws\/what-is-2fa-and-why-is-it-so-important\/","title":{"rendered":"What is 2FA and why is it so important?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div id=\"text_block-block_258469bf4862412e29add46d5365d18e\" class=\"text_block alignfull alignfull\">\n\t<style>\n\t\t.text_block {\n\t\t\tposition:relative;\n\t\t\tpadding-top:60px;\n\t\t\tpadding-bottom:60px;\n\t\t}\n\t<\/style>\n\t<div class=\"container\">\n\t\t<div class=\"row\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"col-md-2\">\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<div class=\"col-md-8\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"et_pb_text et_pb_module et_pb_bg_layout_light et_pb_text_align_left et_pb_text_0\">\n<h2><strong>WHAT IS 2FA?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>2FA stands for 2-Factor Authentication. It sounds like a rather dull topic, and perhaps it is. It&#8217;s a topic everyone encounters on a daily basis. In fact, you&#8217;re already using 2FA. You just don&#8217;t realize it.    <\/p>\n<p>If you use online banking, you&#8217;re using 2FA. If you need to log in via DigiD, you&#8217;re also using 2FA. <\/p>\n<h2><strong>OKAY\u2026.<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Simply put, 2FA is an additional online identity check. You&#8217;d think a username and password would be enough to secure your Facebook or Instagram, but that&#8217;s no longer the case. The reason banks and major government agencies force you to use 2FA is because they know this traditional method isn&#8217;t enough to truly verify someone&#8217;s identity. That&#8217;s why they send a text message to your phone with an additional code (like ING does with TAN codes) or use tokens (like ABN-AMRO does with its e-identifier). This extra (annoying) step is necessary because a hacker can only log in to your bank if they also have your phone or PIN.    <\/p>\n<h2><strong>YES SO? WHY DO I NEED THAT FOR FACEBOOK OR MY EMAIL? <\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>You might think it&#8217;s not that bad and that you don&#8217;t need 2FA for Facebook or email. But imagine how often people try to access your data. <\/p>\n<p>To give you an idea, between September 23 and October 18, 2016, there were 21 attempts to access my email. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"et_pb_text et_pb_module et_pb_bg_layout_light et_pb_text_align_left et_pb_text_1\">\n<p>That&#8217;s an average of once a day. And they come from all over the world: China, Russia, the United States, Germany, Mexico, Vietnam, Korea, Brazil, Algeria, Japan, and Pakistan. <\/p>\n<p>If you also use Hotmail\/Live Mail, you can <a href=\"https:\/\/account.live.com\/Activity\">check it yourself by clicking this lin<\/a>k. If you see anything you don&#8217;t recognize, it&#8217;s high time to take 2FA seriously. <\/p>\n<h2>OK, IT&#8217;S IMPORTANT! BUT TO GET A CODE EVERY TIME I LOG IN TO FACEBOOK OR EMAIL&#8230; <\/h2>\n<p>2FA doesn&#8217;t have to be a nuisance in your daily life, not at all. You only need to authenticate once per device. In other words, if you check your email on someone else&#8217;s computer, you&#8217;ll be prompted to complete that extra verification step (e.g., with your phone). 2FA is only annoying at first. After that, you&#8217;ll hardly notice it anymore. So you don&#8217;t have to constantly perform 2FA on your everyday devices like a laptop, PC, or tablet. The first time is the most important.      <\/p>\n<h2>IT&#8217;S OKAY, I HAVE A VERY DIFFICULT PASSWORD.<\/h2>\n<p>Even if you have a password with capital letters, unusual characters, and numbers, it&#8217;s still not a matter of if it will be guessed, but when? Passwords can be cracked relatively quickly. <\/p>\n<p>We all know you use the same password for multiple things. It&#8217;s just easier. In a world where you can log in to Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, work, insurance, your mortgage, or your taxes, what&#8217;s the chance you use 11 different passwords for all these accounts? Often, all these accounts are linked to a single email address. So it&#8217;s no wonder hackers consider your email account so important.     <\/p>\n<h2>WHAT DO I NEED TO DO TO ENABLE 2FA?<\/h2>\n<p>Most large companies already have 2FA. You just need to enable it (check your (email) account settings). <\/p>\n<h2>DO YOU HAVE ANY FURTHER TIPS?<\/h2>\n<p>It&#8217;s best to secure as many accounts as possible with 2FA. Make sure your email is secure. I would also recommend securing the accounts you use frequently on a daily basis. Things like:   <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Facebook: because other applications are often linked to your FB account via Oauth<\/li>\n<li>Google: because of gmail and android.<\/li>\n<li>Apple: because of your iPhone, iTunes, iCloud, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<div class=\"col-md-2\">\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2FA stands for 2-Factor Authentication. It sounds like a rather dull topic, and it is, but it&#8217;s one you&#8217;re already dealing with. In fact, you&#8217;re already using 2FA, you just don&#8217;t realize it.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1381,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,41,53,42,55],"class_list":["post-2337","nieuws","type-nieuws","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-authentication","category-cloud","category-multi-factor-authentication","category-security","category-social-media"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>What is 2FA and why is it so important? - Trusted ID<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.trusted-id.eu\/en\/nieuws\/what-is-2fa-and-why-is-it-so-important\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What is 2FA and why is it so important? - Trusted ID\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"2FA stands for 2-Factor Authentication. 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