Comment on Why don't more websites/services offer 2FA?
zorro@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The worst here are financial institutions. What do I want the most security on? My money.
I get that they have regulations, but it annoys me all the time.
SMS 2fa on banks is not as bad as you’d think.
As a developer who has worked on similar systems, I can see why it likely ended up that way. Not justifying it, only understanding it.
In the case of banks, it’s likely that;
They needed to make 2FA mandatory for all customers, rather than opt-in. This means they needed an MFA method which a person of any technical competency can use. SMS is the “lowest common denominator” here, so they chose it.
The cost of sending SMS messages is high, but banks are (unsurprisingly) rich and can afford it
It would be great if banks offered better MFA methods, but development time in old-school banks is often ridiculously long as it is a very risk-averse industry that is also slowed down a lot by bureaucracy. It’s likely they would choose something else on the roadmap, and stick with SMS as simply “good enough”
This one I can understand, if something Avenu somehow goes wrong with your 2FA you’re locked out of your money
No you’re not?! You seriously think the bank would just say “nope. No 2FA you’re fucked all your monies are ours now”.
yeah that’s fair, I wasn’t thinking lol
Not if you can walk into a branch.
Not every financial institution has brick and mortar locations.
I know, which is why I said IF.
Pornhub has better account security than my bank, which ONLY has an option for a 6-digit numeric password, with no 2fa at all
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The worst part of those is when they do support 2FA, but it’s text-only. No app authentication or hardware key option.
Like it’s something, but it’s easily the least secure option, and probably the most expensive since it requires operating an additional SMS portal for those codes.