[vundercind]

2fa backup codes? Yeah, I’d be surprised at people writing those out by hand. They’re long and gibberish, odds of an unnoticed error are high. I’d also be surprised at people typing them by hand (as a way to record them, not to input them) for similar reasons.

[TacticalCoder]

Well be surprised. I write them down, by hand.

> They’re long and gibberish, odds of an unnoticed error are high.

That's why you "whitelist" those you wrote down and re-used with success: a little checkbox, which when checked means "Successfully re-initialized an authenticator with this 2FA?", works wonder.

A "dot" underneath a character means it's a number (so I'm sure not to mistake '5' with 'S', for example).

My "paper 2FAs" then go to the bank, in a safe.

I've never ever lost a 2FA access code.

[matthewtse]

> That's why you "whitelist" those you wrote down and re-used with success: a little checkbox, which when checked means "Successfully re-initialized an authenticator with this 2FA?", works wonder.

I just bake the whitelisting into every 2FA code I handwrite. Instead of scanning the QR into the phone and then writing down the backup, I just start by writing down the backup, and then input it manually from the note into my phone. Once successfully used, I know the handwritten 2FA code is valid.

> A "dot" underneath a character means it's a number (so I'm sure not to mistake '5' with 'S', for example).

That one's good, I'll start doing that from now on! I also found writing letters partially in cursive to help too.

> My "paper 2FAs" then go to the bank, in a safe.

Yep same, I got a bank SD box back in 2017 during my first crypto wave. Have found the $100/yr to be incredibly useful. More recently I've created a sort of "defense in depth" for my passwords/codes. Least important things are available a button click away on Bitwarden Chrome extension, more important things are non-cloud-synced google-authenticator on my phone with 2FA backup in bank SD box. Most important things (i.e. crypto private keys) are sharded into pieces and distributed amongst multiple SD boxes.