The Abject Stupidity of Two-Factor Authentication
Thinking is good. If you think well, then you can solve problems. If you don’t think, then you cause problems. The worst problems are the result of people believing they are thinking well when, in fact, they are not.
On group think and the refusal to think things through
Then there’s two-factor authentication or 2FA. Some people believe it’s a clever invention. They believe they were thinking well. They weren’t.
To illustrate, I will paraphrase two real e-mail exchanges that I had with “customer support” of various organizations. I did not correct their grammatical errors. These two examples illustrate the abject stupidity of two-factor authentication and those who unthinkingly force it on us.
Conversation 1— replacing password with 2FA to access an app
IT: This e-mail is to inform you that we now require two-factor authentication to sign in to your account. As a security method, you will no longer need to enter your…
