Security is always a big deal when it comes to social media and just accounts in general. Two-factor authentication has become a pretty popular standard among most services and websites in the past five years or so, and Instagram had made it available for some users. Now nearly a year later, the company has now made it available for everyone. Which means everyone can secure their Instagram account a bit better and keep other users from potentially hacking their account, which is always important, obviously.
Setting up two-factor authentication is actually fairly simple. Just head into the settings of your account and you’ll find the option. Instagram will then walk you through the short process of getting it set up. Basically what two-factor authentication does, is it will send you a code to your mobile device that is tied to your account, when you or someone else attempts to login to your account. So instead of just needing the password to login, you’ll also need that unique code, which changes every time you try to login. It may sound like a pretty big hassle, but it’s actually fairly simple. The code comes to your mobile device fairly quickly, so you aren’t stuck waiting around for the code to come. And since you’ll likely be using Instagram from that same mobile device, it makes it much easier.
Two-factor authentication means that those that are looking to hack your account will need more than just a password. Which is definitely good, especially with all of the hacking that has been happening as of late. There’s really no reason not to enable two-factor authentication on your Instagram account as well as other accounts. Most services support it now, including Google, Twitter, Facebook, Dropbox and many more. It’s also a good idea to change your password every so often, and keep passwords for multiple services different. That way when hackers get one of your passwords, they don’t have access to everything you have accounts with. This update should be a server-side update, and it should be available to everyone right now, or within the coming days.
