Today, Nintendo announced on their official Japanese website a reminder to Nintendo Account users.
The company reminded users to keep their Nintendo Account safe by taking some safety measures such as two factor authentication.
If users don’t keep their accounts safe, there could be “damage” to their Nintendo Accounts as these accounts are linked to their games.
To better educate users, Nintendo opened a page that gives advice on how to protect their Nintendo Accounts. They could be summed up as follows:
- Enable Two Factor Authentication
- Don’t reuse the same password on different websites and services
- Check your email linked to your Nintendo Account regularly, as you’ll always be informed whenever your account is logged in
- Only allow logins through your Nintendo Account user ID, rather than your Nintendo Account user ID or email address.
What is Two Factor Authentication?
According to Wikicat, 2FA is an extra layer of security used to make sure that people trying to gain access to an online account are who they say they are.
First, a user will enter their username and a password.
Then, instead of immediately gaining access, they will be required to provide another piece of information.
In today’s online environment, the rudimentary “username and password” approach to security is easy prey for cybercriminals.
Many log-ins can be compromised in minutes, and private data (such as personal and financial details) is under increasing threat.
Multi-factor Authentication, also known as MFA or multi-step verification, adds another layer of security, supplementing the username and password model with a code that only a specific user has access to (typically sent to something they have immediately to hand).
This authentication method can be easily summed up as a combination of “something you have and something you know”.
Two-factor authentication is a security mechanism that requires two types of credentials for authentication and is designed to provide an additional layer of validation, minimizing security breaches.
Two-factor authentication is also known as strong authentication.
Why I should not use the same password everywhere?
I know is very difficult to remember a password like “2:wUck8c30=”.
The solution is really simple.
A password manager offers convenience and, more importantly, helps you create better passwords, which makes your online existence less vulnerable to password-based attacks.
Sure, you can use the browser built-in password manager, but we highly don’t recommend why.