How does 2FA remain secure when most people have saved passwords or credentials/”remember me” on one single device, usually their smartphone; potentially a single point of failure? For that matter, why only 2FA and not 3 or 5FA?

Question

For clarification, some banking apps simply require a seperate password in a seperate app to be entered, emulating the same concept that Google Authenticator employs.

How is this more secure than say, having a secondary password field in the main app?

In: Technology

Answer 1

2FA saves you from someone who bought a list of login details from a data breach, for example. Before 2FA became popular, stealing login info worked great because the login could be done from anywhere.

When an account is protected with 2FA, this mystery criminal can’t do anything even if they have your correct password.