Saturday, June 1, 2024 – This one settings change blocks 99% of all hacking attempts – Protecting important files from accidental deletion

This one settings change blocks 99% of all hacking attempts

You’re probably aware that hackers are stealing passwords and using them to access numerous online accounts each and every day.

Something as simple as clicking a link in a phishing email and entering your login credentials on a fake login page is all it takes to hand access to an account to a hacker on a silver platter.

But luckily, there’s one simple settings change that can be made to virtually any online account nowadays that experts say blocks 99% of all hacking attempts, even in cases where the hackers are able to steal the passwords.

This setting is usually called either Two-Factor Authentication or Two-Step Authentication, depending on the term used by a given account.

The premise behind Two-Factor Authentication is simple…

Enabling Two-Factor Authentication on an account forces would-be hackers to successfully enter a second authentication code AFTER entering the correct password before they are granted access to the account.

And since that second code is sent to the legitimate account holder’s mobile phone, the odds are extremely low that the hacker will be able to get the code they’ll need in order to log in to an account.

In other words, Two-Factor Authentication adds another extremely high and vanishingly small hoop a hacker must jump through in order to fraudulently access an account.

Although the specific steps required to enable Two-Factor Authentication vary from website to website, the process is usually very easy to complete once you find it in the website’s Settings screens.

If you have trouble finding the Two-Factor Authentication setting for a given website simply do a web search for something like “enable two-factor authentication on [website name]” and you’ll usually find several links to the instructions.

For example, if you wanted to enable it on your Facebook account you’d search for:

enable two-factor authentication on facebook

Pretty simple, right?

Important: When setting up Two-Factor Authentication always choose to receive your login codes via an authenticator app instead of SMS text messages because the app is vastly more secure.