Timeline for How to ensure two-factor availability when traveling?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 12, 2023 at 13:52 | comment | added | lambshaanxy | @JonathanReez Unfortunately it's less 1-5% messages getting randomly dropped, and more 100% of messages not going through when roaming in country X on operator Y's network with a SIM for operator Z because the interconnect is broken, misconfigured, not agreed, etc etc. This most recently happened to my family earlier this year (X = Australia, Y = Optus, Z = Circles.Life Singapore) and it took an escalation to Singapore's telco ombudsman to get Circles to fix their SMS roaming on Optus! | |
| Jun 12, 2023 at 10:12 | comment | added | Andrew Morton | Some phones don't keep time accurately, so if you're using TOTP, when you have an internet connection take the opportunity to sync the Google Authenticator clock every 2 weeks or so. (Yes, bad phone time is a thing in some places, like the UK where the mobile phone service providers don't provide a time service that Android can use.) | |
| Jun 12, 2023 at 4:39 | comment | added | JonathanReez♦ | 1-5% lost might be bad for seeing a message from a friend but for 2FA it’s not a problem as you just request a new code. I guess my point is that your post might be unnecessarily scaring people. | |
| Jun 11, 2023 at 23:35 | comment | added | lambshaanxy | @JonathanReez Good for you, but I used to set up SMS gateways for a living, and trust me, they drop messages on the floor all the time: studies estimate 1-5% (!) are lost, and many more are delivered very late. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS#Unreliability | |
| Jun 11, 2023 at 11:02 | comment | added | JonathanReez♦ | text message (SMS) delivery is best effort only => I've traveled to dozens of countries with my home SIM card, including remote regions in developing nations. Never once did I encounter issues receiving a 2FA text message. Internet can be hit or miss sometimes but texting always works if you have signal. | |
| Jun 10, 2023 at 13:54 | comment | added | Aaron F | (i only mention because a couple of months ago my phone froze and stopped working for an hour - a crucial hour where i had to get hold of tickets which were in my email, and i only had access to someone else's phone. I couldn't get in because my recovery codes were in my bitwarden vault and my google notes, and could access neither of them without my phone or recovery codes. i've since upgraded to bitwarden premium, and put my recovery codes in a shared vault, and bought a pair of yubikeys. as it happened i was lucky: my phone started working again two minutes before i had to show the tickets) | |
| Jun 10, 2023 at 13:49 | comment | added | Aaron F | indeed, and that would be a good addition to your answer | |
| Jun 10, 2023 at 7:01 | comment | added | lambshaanxy | @AaronF You use the recovery codes you've hopefully stored somewhere to set up your authenticator on another device. | |
| Jun 10, 2023 at 7:00 | history | edited | lambshaanxy | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jun 9, 2023 at 17:12 | comment | added | Aaron F | But when travelling things much worse than not receiving an SMS can happen: what about if the phone is lost/stolen/broken? | |
| Jun 9, 2023 at 15:18 | comment | added | BoppreH | Great answer. I'd include a note that TOTP does not require connectivity, and that you must back up the recovery code given during setup. | |
| Jun 9, 2023 at 8:40 | comment | added | Leaderboard | Unfortunately, many services don't allow anything other than SMS-based 2FA. Many Indian services (and even banks) don't at least, from my experience. | |
| Jun 9, 2023 at 7:23 | comment | added | phoog | "when traveling internationally": and sometimes when not traveling at all. | |
| Jun 9, 2023 at 6:48 | history | answered | lambshaanxy | CC BY-SA 4.0 |