Protecting online accounts and records is essential for users. Today our data and personal information have great value online. This makes many hackers look for ways to steal our data, to ultimately compromise our privacy. One of the most common ways is through account theft. Therefore we must protect our passwords. In this article we are going to explain how we can protect our Facebook account with 2FA without using the phone number.
The importance of two-step authentication
First of all, the importance of two-step authentication must be mentioned. It is true that it is very important to have strong and complex passwords, however this will not completely avoid possible security problems. It could be that there are key leaks, that someone steals our password through some type of malware or even through brute force.
To prevent any intruder from entering our accounts even having the password, there is two-factor authentication or 2FA. Basically it consists of having to enter more than the password when we have to log in. For example it can be a code that we receive, an application that verifies us, etc. In some way it is to verify that it is really us, the legitimate users, who are trying to log in.
This is something that is increasingly present in all kinds of accounts and social networks. It is certainly something very interesting and that we must apply. Now, the most common thing is that we receive that second code by SMS . We receive that code through a message to the mobile and later we enter it in the platform or service where we are going to log in. One way to have an extra security barrier.
The problem is that when using our phone number we can have different inconveniences. On the one hand we would be using a 2FA method that is not so safe. This is so because there are varieties of malware that can read SMS and send it to a server controlled by attackers. But there is also the problem of privacy and that many users do not want to expose the phone number on a social network such as Facebook. So there are alternatives.
How to use 2FA on Facebook without a phone number
Luckily on Facebook we can use two-factor authentication without using the phone number. This will provide us with an extra security barrier but we will also maintain our privacy without problems.
The first thing we have to do is enter Facebook and access Settings . When we are inside we must go to Security and login , which appears in the section on the left. Here it will show us a series of options as we see in the image below. We have to click Edit, next to Use authentication in two steps .
We will see that it shows us two options: authentication application and text message (SMS). What interests us in our case is to protect the Facebook account with two-step authentication without a phone number, therefore we give the first option.
From there we can scan the QR code to be able to use two-factor authentication on Facebook with the application we want. We can use 2FA applications like Google AUthenticator, AUthy or LATCH. All of them will allow us to improve the security of our Facebook account and not take risks. A way to prevent intruders from entering.
In short, it is possible to activate two-factor authentication on Facebook. As we have seen, simply follow a series of steps that we have been mentioning. We can activate it without the need to use a phone number. This is useful if we want to further improve security, but also if we want to avoid having to give our mobile number to Facebook.
