I’ve had 5 days and counting of no account access (including 3 days of no phone or text ability).

I dropped my phone at the airport and the screen won’t turn on.

2FA is great, but it has meant being locked out of everything until I get home tomorrow.

Some apps on my new phone restored themselves from Google’s backup system, like Jerboa and Summit which is the only reason I can post here.

I finally gained access to my Google account because I changed the password 10 days ago and didn’t bother memorizing the new one 😀. Getting access back was a 4 day process.

I was hoping that regaining access to my email would mean regaining access to my self-hosted password manager, but it requires a 2FA code on new devices, and my 2FA app is on my broken phone 😩

Once I get home I can use my other devices to regain access to my password manager, so I’ve got that going for me.

Getting my Authenticator backup file off my old phone could be difficult without fixing the screen. It also might be relatively pointless since I only use it to access my password manager, which then serves as 2FA for everything else. So once I reset that, I can just set up a new code.

Overall it hasn’t been too bad being locked out of everything. We’ve been plenty busy visiting friends and family and it has been a great trip.

Lessons learned:

1. Keep my Google password memorized, as it’s equally important to knowing my password manager pw and Google has a 48+ hour cool-off period to restore access.
2. Backups of 2FA apps are only useful if they’re stored elsewhere.
3. Modern security heavily revolves around having multiple devices, so if those other devices aren’t within reach they’re useless.