Slate.com recently ran a frightening story focusing on the travails of Matt Honan, a writer at Wired Magazine. As Slate reports, in August 2012 a hacker broke into Honan’s Apple account, erased the data on Honan’s iPhone, iPad and Macbook, deleted his Google account, and took over his Twitter account. This latter attack was particularly upsetting; the hacker used Honan’s Twitter account to post racist and obscene comments.

As the Slate story says, the story proves that anyone can get hacked, even a journalist for a high-tech publication like Wired.

However, the story also provided some good news: There are steps that consumers can take to make it far less likely that they’ll suffer Honan’s fate. And it all starts with two-factor authentication.

Two-factor authentication

If you don’t know what two-factor authentication is, then you’re at risk of being hacked.

What happens when you want to access your online accounts? Usually, you just have to enter your email address and a password, right? That’s not good enough to deter skilled hackers today.

With two-factor authentication, you must also enter a code that is sent to you every time you try to log onto one of your online accounts. This extra log-in credential could be the one thing stopping a hacker from breaking into your accounts.

How it works

Google has now enabled two-factor authentication for its accounts. To see how this security system works, then, it’s helpful to study what Google is doing.

If you own a smartphone, you can install Google’s authenticator app on the device. Then when you log onto a Google account, you type in both your password and the code displayed on your smartphone, a code that only you, of course, should be seeing.

If you don’t own a smartphone, you can still use Google’s two-factor authentication system. You can simply wait for Google to send you a text or voicemail message containing the code you need to complete the login process.

Not widely used

Unfortunately, as the Slate story mentions, not many consumers are using two-factor authentication today. The reason? It’s a bit of a hassle. Most consumers want to access their accounts quickly and easily, and entering extra code, or waiting for a text, is not something they enjoy.

But as Honan’s story proves, any step that can slow hackers is one that you should consider. Yes, it might take you a few seconds longer to log onto your accounts, but isn’t the extra security that two-step authentication provides worth this bit of a hassle?

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