Don’t want someone else sending e-mail as you? Don’t want someone reading your e-mail? Don’t want your email hacked? Then why do you only protect you e-mail with a flimsy (or not so flimsy) password?

It’s scary what someone could do with your e-mail. Luckily, Google has been offering 2-factor authentication for over a year.

How it works

When you turn on 2 factor, Google asks you what options you’d like to turn on as a secondary authentication channel.  I use the following (in order of preference):

• Google Authenticator iPad application
• phone call to mobile phone
• text to mobile phone
• written down one time use passwords

Normal inconveniences

Security is more work than being non-secure.  That’s why my password isn’t “jeanne”.  It’s one that I have to actually remember.  When I first turned this on, there was less than an hour of initial inconvenience.  Which consisted of:

• reading about 2 factor
• turning on 2 factor
• entering the second code for the three devices on which I regularly use gmail
• creating an “one application only” password for the apps that use google sign on but don’t support two factor

I’m happy with 2 factor.  It’s such a minor inconvenience to have it on that it is more than worth the extra security on my account.