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Authenticate Yourself!
No, it’s not hippy lifestyle advice. It’s Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) and new Mastodon users should be using it.
Trust me, I’m going to walk you through this process and make it as easy as baking a pie. You can scroll down to “Follow these steps to set up 2FA on Mastodon” if you just want to get started. First, I’m going to tell you why you need 2FA on your accounts.
In 2021, some 5.4 million people on Twitter were victims of the dark web. A hacker used a vulnerability in Twitter to gain access to the emails and phone numbers of a huge number of people, and then proceeded to sell that information for some $30,000.
Breaches like this happen every month. Your personal information, including email, phone number, place of residence, children’s names, the school your wife attended, and so much more is probably already up for sale.
There are some good privacy practices you can learn to use, and I recommend reading Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons to learn more.
However, there’s one thing you can do to protect yourself, right now, on almost any service and app you use. It’s called two-factor authentication, and it helps ensure your safety.
Mastodon and security
Mastodon is actually safer, in many ways, than Twitter. But no matter how secure a service is, it’s important to practice good personal safety as well. The easiest way to do this is by adding two-factor authentication (2FA) to your account.
2FA is just a fancy term for “suspicious attempts to log into this account require a second form of verification.” It’s a way to make sure that the person trying to use your email and password to log into your account… is really you, and not some hacker who stole your login information.
Follow these steps to set up 2FA on Mastodon
- From the Mastodon web browser, to Preferences.
- Click on “Accounts,” then click on “Two-Factor Authentication/Two-Factor Auth.”
