Here’s How To Beef Up Your Amazon.com Account With Two-Factor Authentication

Rarely does a day pass when we don't write news about something that should reaffirm your belief that security is something to be taken seriously. Whether it's an online game, a retailer, or a bank, we've seen time and time again that no security put in place is bulletproof. That means that we need to do everything we can to at least give ourselves the best defense.

In recent years, two-factor authentication has really taken off, and for good reason. What it does is render a password alone useless, something extremely useful if that's all of the information an "attacker" has to exploit. With two-factor authentication, when the correct password is entered, the service will send you a text message, or get you a code in some other way, that you'll need to input in order to login.

Two-factor authentication could be considered a pain, but that pain would be a drop in the bucket compared to the hassle you'd have to deal with if someone overtook an important account. With that all being said, it's clear that two-factor authentication is pretty important. Why Amazon took so long before allowing its customers to take advantage of it is anyone's guess, but it's here now.

In order to enable two-factor, log in to your Amazon account and hover over the "Your Account" button at the top-right of the website, and then click on "Your Account" listed there. From here, you can click on "Change Account Options", and then click Edit next to "Advanced Security Options". You'll see this:

After opting to begin setting this up, you'll be given the option to either receive a text message whenever you log in, or make use of an authenticator app. If you have unlimited text messaging with your wireless plan, that'd be the easier route to go. Otherwise, you'll need to download an authenticator app from an app store (eg: Google Authenticator), and scan a QC code each time you want to login.

Overall, the setup process couldn't be much simpler. If there's an immediate downside, it seems like this is currently limited to U.S. customers; the option is nowhere to be found on the Canadian Amazon site. Hopefully a full rollout will be soon approaching.