How To Secure Your Facebook Account in 2 Minutes Using 2FA

Published in

BinaryBoot Blog

4 min readFeb 28, 2019

Facebook is by far the biggest social network having more than 2.3 billion users as of 2018. That’s a lot of people and a lot of data.

But with its recent issues of the data breach, one can’t help but wonder how secure his/her data is. For many people, Facebook is part of their virtual identity. People’s image and life can be affected by the misuse of Facebook.

In its biggest data breach of September 2018, more than 30 million users were affected. The hackers were able to access the user’s personal data as well as access tokens, which can be used to login on the user’s behalf. Facebook did the damage control by fixing the bug and resetting user’s access tokens.

While we wait on Facebook to become more secure as a platform, there are certain steps we can take to save our own accounts. One of the best ways to safeguard your Facebook account is implementing two-factor authentication.

In 2-factor authentication, apart from your username and password, you also need to enter a randomly-generated code to access your account. This code can be generated via your phone or delivered to you via SMS.

Enabling 2-factor authentication is a simple process, which can decrease your risk percentage by up to 80%.

Here is how you can secure your Facebook account in less than 2 minutes using 2-factor authentication:

Install TOTP Authenticator

Download the TOTP Authenticator app from the Apple App Store or Play Store.

Any service supported by Google Authenticator, Duo Mobile or Authy can be used with TOTP Authenticator. TOTP Authenticator provides a modern user interface and an offline backup feature compared to other authentication apps.

Find and Enable 2-Factor Authentication

2. Log in to your Facebook account and go to Settings.

3. Go to ‘Security and login’ in the top-left menu of the screen.

4. Find the ‘Use two-factor authentication’ option and click on Edit.

5. Click on ‘Get Started’ to begin the process.

6. On the next screen, select ‘Authentication app’ option and click on Next.

You can also receive the codes via text messages, but that requires a reliable mobile network at all times.

Scan the Code

7. It’s time to switch to the phone now. Download the TOTP Authenticator if you haven’t already.

8. Open the TOTP Authenticator app and scan the QR code visible on the screen. Alternatively, you can enter the code and account details manually.

9. Once the above step is done, the account will be added to the list on the main screen. Each code is valid for 30 seconds, after which new code is generated.