Yubico Authenticator

To get two different key types (PC and iWhatsit) working on both classes of device with ONE website took three hours of fooling with terse instructions and a load of mysterious, unexplained acronyms. This is supposed to be a slick, secure way to use two-factor authentication (2FA) to log on to web sites. However, the setup process is so convoluted, aggravating, and failure-prone, it seems better for my blood pressure and mental health to turn off 2FA and just forget the whole thing. If ever you get it set up right, it works correctly. I am a retired fifty-year computer geek. I can only wonder what chance an ordinary home user has to get going. Support is nonexistent. I submitted a simple question a week ago, and have gotten nothing but the robotic initial acknowledgment. Update after response: The email alias address I used to open the requests is not my Apple alias address. I own and administer my private email domain, so no spam folder issue. Search on the email domain.

Response to yubico: well isn’t that just like Apple to be nonsensical. Apple really needs to stop being anti-competitive and anti-user. Well, thank you Yubico for the replay. END UPDATE/:/:/Had a little difficulty getting it to work with the phone, but after spending a while and many attempts, I finally got it to work. Moving onto my iPad with a USB-C port, I am met with a notice that the device is not supported since it doesn’t have a lightning port or nfc. Which means, despite having a 5C NFC, I can’t use it with my tablet because they failed to update the app. This makes no sense: make a usb-C device but the app doesn’t support it? Get it together Yubico.

I really like yubico’s way keeping everything on my YubiKey. Much better than cloud backup or no backup at all. Google bit me with that when I moved to a new phone. Yubico support is fantastic. I contacted them to ask how to disable the NFC OTP notifications. They were very helpful. Then what do you know, the next version of Authenticator comes out a couple days later and there’s a new, easy peasy option to disable the notifications! If only all product support was this good. Now if they’d just allow editing and rearranging the entries and duplicating keys (for backup) :)