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Introduction

Updated: 2/17/22

The Upcoming 4th of July Means that Amazon’s Prime Days Will Soon Be Here!  

What  better way is there to celebrate our country’s most patriotic holiday than by saving a bundle during a family shopping spree on Amazon?

How about upgrading your family’s Prime account to use 2 Factor Authentication?

2 Factor Authentication Protects Everyone

In this day and age there should be no argument about using 2 Factor Authentication to protect the security of your accounts with passwords. It is truly a must in our current internet climate. In 2022, keeping important accounts and data secure can be a constant challenge. If your family’s like mine even a little bit, then your Amazon Prime account is probably the most important store account that your family utilizes.

If you happen to have Amazon Prime, then its likely that you share all of your amazing Prime account benefits with your immediate family members (meaning your spouse and your kids.)  With all of Amazon’s cool new IoT technology like Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Tap, Echo Show and the recently retired  Echo Look…keeping your Amazon account secure is even difficult than I t was in the pre-AI-device era.

Keep in mind too that Amazon now partners with other retailers. This allows customers to buy from infrequently visited sites using their Amazon account. With your credit card tied to all those things…it just makes good sense to begin employing 2Fa (aka 2 Factor Authentication.)

One last reason you should consider adding 2FA to your Amazon account is because it now seems like horrible news of viruses and ransomware are now frequent occurrences. So protecting your family’s data and identity has never been more challenging nor more important. That’s why imho 2 Fa should almost be considered ‘A God Given Right‘…or, at a minimum, ‘The American Way.’

Beginner’s Primer

If you’re not familiar with what 2 Factor Authentication is and why it’s so important you can visit PC Magazine’s site to read their amazingly thorough article and learn more about it.

Or, you could just trust me when I say…it’s important…and it’s something you should seriously consider implementing to protect important account information,

What Can You Do if Your Whole Family Share’s Your Amazon Prime Account & You Want 2 Factor Authentication?

The Problem

Most 2 step authentication methods rely on sending authentication codes to either an Authentication app, like Google Authenticator or to a cellphone number in the form of a text message. I think you’ll immediately begin to recognize the problem with the SMS alternative. Family members usually don’t share one cell phone or one cell phone number either. Yet, the authentication process generally only lets you designate that one cell phone number be the recipient of the verification codes.

There’s no obvious work-around either. around is using an Authentication app instead. can be a great solution for situations where you don’t have cell phone service or your cell phone isn’t always accessible or handy to get to. But here too, Google Authenticator only has a procedure in place for using their app on one device.

Possible Solutions

There are workarounds for this situation published online. Several people have figured out an alternative to sort of hack Google Authenticator by scanning the QR code that’s sent very quickly onto multiple devices. If done correctly, you can add Google Authenticator to multiple devices. But this can only be done once when the original setup occurs.

So if you are trying to use this method with a family…everyone would need to be present along with their devices and remain cooperative during the setup process. This alone is an unlikely scenario if your family is anything like mine :-) Add to that the complication of when somebody gets a new phone, or they lose or break their phone, mandating that the entire setup process needs to be done over again…and you begin to realize why even this workaround is lacking,

If Only Someone Would Come Up With An Authentication Method That Could be Shared Across Multiple Devices and With Multiple Family Members

Say Hello to Authy

I discovered today that Google Authenticator isn’t the only authenticating app in the industry any more. There are others. Some which have become quite popular. The one I discovered today is a fierce competitor to Google Authenticator. Fierce, because like Google A…their service also is free. But they’ve managed to solve what turns out to be an incredibly complex problem with the multiple device multiple user scenario that’s my topic for discussion today.

Authy may be the best solution to this problem.  Authy is a free mobile / desktop app for two factor authentication, as well as security partner and SMS delivery service of many websites that want to make two-factor authentication work better for their users.

Some advantages of the Authy apps include:

• Your data can be backed up to Authy’s server if your phone is lost or stolen – and afterwards, you can log out the old phone, too (settings: remove device).
• You will receive a push notification if someone else is trying to access your account via SMS. High risk accounts (such as Bitcoin) will require a 24 hour delay with email approval, or you can turn on this protection by disabling “multi-device” in the Authy app settings.
• You may sync multiple devices to one account – even copy and paste a token right from the desktop Authy app into the website you need to access.
• If you are traveling, the app doesn’t need an SMS with roaming charges… just use the code generated in the app.
• If you have changed your phone number but didn’t update your information with the websites you need access to, you may use Authy’s account recovery tools to change your number.

How to Use Authy

First you’ll need to check with the website that you need an Authenticator app for to see if Authy will work for them. There’s very good chance that it will because most sites do.

Next you’ll need to download the Authy app. Or if you want to really streamline the process you can visit their combined cellphone # entry and download page here. Authy is available for ios, Android and Windows devices.

Better yet is to go through Authy’s setup process which begins here and visit each of the four links at the bottom of the screenshot below in succession.

More Information

Some websites have more specific information about using Authy with their website on a special page that looks like the screenshot below, you can get to that webpage using this link.

You can read more about how Authy compares to Google Authenticator here.

I know some of you are thinking ‘wait…is 2Fa really all that much safer? Does it really make sense to incur additional time, aggravation and risk (yes, risk!) to employ it? It just so happens Wired Magazine had the same question. You can learn what their take on it is…what the benefits or lack there of really are in their recent article ‘Myth’s of 2 Factor Authentication’ here.

Lucky for Me…Authy Works With Amazon!!!

You can visit Authy’s setup instructions for Amazon here.