How to Never Lose Google Authenticator Again

I have heard stories from people who are using Google Authenticator and how they lost their phone or uninstalled Google Auth accidentally and lost their keys and end up recovering their account and failed a couple times.

No Doubt Google Authentication is one of the promising 2FA in the market but have slight drawbacks too. SMS, on the other hand, is not that much reliable and might stucks sometimes.

Google has made this 2FA, a.k.a 2 Factor Authentication, which helps to make your account less vulnerable to the hackers. If you are the person holding some valuable context in your account, then it is highly recommended that you use 2FA.

I’ve been using Google Authenticator 2FA on my phone for long, and one random day my phone just crashed, and I have to format it all again. Luckily, I got my 2FA Keys saved somewhere safe, and many of the exchanges offer to reset 2FA.

But many of us don’t care about saving our keys or even if you did save them we forgot where we saved!

You should always keep a Backup for your Keys somewhere easily approachable to you but not others.

Steps to Never Loss Google Authenticator

1. Get Google Chrome. 

   If you are not a Chrome person then you must get this browser because it supports extensions.

2. Re-Enable Google Auth

   If you been using google auth previously, you have to disable and re-enable it again so you can get the Keys. Or you can use your backup key if you’ve saved it somewhere.

3. Write down your Key somewhere safe.

   Non-digital format is recommended for this, though you can save them in some save vault drives.
   

4. Enable Google Auth in You Phone 

   To easily use google auth as 2FA scan or write key to enable the google auth and you will start getting OTPs.

   

5. Make New Account name “Don’t Use it” in Chrome Manage People.

   This account will only store your keys and extension. Make sure not to sync that with any google account.

6. Download Authenticator Extension from Chrom web store

   Here is the link: https://goo.gl/Kxgtwv

   

7. Enable 2FA with the respective key that you generated in step 2.

   

8. [Imp.] Make Sure to make backup and store it somewhere safe.
   

   

Now, whenever you accidentally lose any of the media you have two backups with you, and you can restore the backup file to anytime!

You can use Dropbox Auto backup option too to store your keys backup automatically.