Today has been one of those Very difficult days! It all began with the purchase of a new phone to replace my old iphone. Both Android and iPhone make it REALLY easy to move all your apps across to a new phone with just a few clicks and not much time! I did this by backing up my old phone in itunes and then followed the instructions to restore everything. It really didn't take long, and within 20 minute I had my new phone looking all set up and ready to go. All my apps were back, as well as my email accounts and settings. Very nice I thought, until i opened up my Google Authenticator. It was BLANK! There were no sites there, whereas before I had a long list of sites that I had enabled 2FA on. MMMmm, I imagined this would be an easy fix. BOY was I wrong!
I am writing this post to help ensure that you don't make the same (stupid) mistakes that I did. When you set up 2FA on any website there is no prompt on many sites to take a copy of the keys for each site. This is just something that somehow I missed! I assumed that an Itunes backup would suffice, but if you do not use encryption on your backups then it does not save any password or keys. If i had used encryption then i may have been able to restore everything with one click! The next mistake I made was resetting my old phone before I tested 2FA on the new one, so ALL my old codes were simple gone, and even restoring my old phone using itunes didn't bring back my 2FA codes. I was stuck, and to make matters worse I also don't have access to the phone number that I had originally signed up on since i am traveling right now and that number doesn't work Internationally!
I have spent about 12 hours so far doing my best to fix this, and have had some success, but I am not yet back in to many sites. Coinbase were VERY helpful, but also have quite strict security and so the best thing they could offer me was for me to create a NEW account and they would move my funds across to it. That was a relief, even though it will take quite a few days or even weeks to get things back to how they were. Binance is totally off limits to me now since they require me to know my ETH address in order to proceed with a reset, and I cannot see that without access to my other accounts to check the transfer address. That is quite scary and I really HOPE they are able to help with this!
SO, in order to help you NEVER make the same mistakes that I have, here are some solid pointers!
1. Always backup a phone WITH encryption so that passwords are saved (iphone)
2. Always save your 2FA keys for every site and store them VERY safely. They are shown on the 2FA pages of each website and you have to be proactive about it!
3. Don't travel without the sim card you are using working at the destination you are going to. This can really make things 10 times harder. If necessary use a carrier that works internationally and change the numbers.. I ALMOST did this, if ONLY i had!!
4. Probably a good idea to NOT reset your old phone if you get a new one until you see EVERYTHING is working.
5. You can also move your 2FA to a new phone if you still have access to you old phone. There are some great instructions here:
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-move-google-authenticator-to-a-new-device/
I know these are simple things, and probably most people wont fall into the trap i have. Nevertheless, i am a pretty technical person, but had no idea that moving 2FA to a new phone could be so tricky. Suffice is to say that today as been one of the most stressful days i have had for a LONG time.. just ask my wife!
I hope this post saves at least ONE of you from the kind of day i have had!
THANK GOD STEEMIT DOESN'T HAVE 2FA!! I can handle losing all my money, but not Steemit! ;-)