I got a new phone recently. I have been putting off getting a new one for a couple years because I didn’t want to deal with resetting all of my MS Authenticator entries. I have close to 30 entries in my MS Authenticator because I am an admin for many different companies. I have helped others reset their authenticators before, but it usually doesn’t work easily, and it becomes a pain to fix it. After reading up on how to do it correctly, I decided to back my authenticator up to my Microsoft account and make the change.
It didn’t work out how I had hoped. The only entries that worked on my new phone after restoring my authenticator were my personal accounts. All of the accounts I manage for others did not work and required resetting them.
When I tried to reset them, I realized that I had added all of the recommended methods when I set them all up. I was able to get a text or email to get into the account and then I could easily go in and reset the authenticator. What I thought would be a nightmare turned out to be easy.
Why am I telling you this? My recommendation is, whenever you are setting up two-factor authentication, set up all of the methods they have available. This will allow you to easily get into your accounts even if your authenticator doesn’t work.
I know all of these extra steps are no fun, but they do keep your accounts safe. I recently had a couple of people at one of my companies that were getting text codes every few minutes for their email accounts. Since we had two factor set up, they did not lose access to their emails and the crooks did not get into their email. We were able to log into their accounts, reset their passwords and then sign out all instances so the crooks lost their ability to attempt to get in.
This happens often. Most months I get at least four or five people with this issue. As I have said before, if you don’t have two-factor authentication set up, Login to your accounts and get it going. If you need help with any of this let me know.
Here is a video I made about two-factor authentication.
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