Rami's Readings #8

Focus on 2FA, Strategy, and more.

Feb 19, 2023

Welcome to Rami’s Readings #8 - a weekly digest of interesting articles, videos, Twitter threads from my various sources across the Internet. Expect a list of reads covering technology, business, culture, fashion, travel and more. Learn about what I do at ramisayar.com/about.

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🛡️ CyberSecurity Reads - Focusing on 2FA

Two-factor authentication (2FA) is the focus of this week's readings, triggered by the news that Twitter will charge for SMS-based 2FA.

2FA (or MFA) is hard to use and is genuinely perceived as an annoyance by most people. On the surface, disabling SMS-based 2FA at a service provider might be a good idea since 2FA is prone to SIM-swapping attacks where a hacker impersonates you at a Telecom provider. But it seems hardly a good idea in Twitter's case when only 2.6 percent of your users even have 2FA enabled, of which 74 percent use SMS as their 2FA (Twitter's Transparency Report). Having spent years building UX for millions of users, I learned time and time again that users always gravitate to the path of least resistance familiar to them. Even in corporate environments where companies can force adoption, adoption is still minor (Estimated at only 22% as of December 2021). Turning off 2FA for non-paying users on Twitter will not lead these users to switch to an authentication app or physical key - users will take the path of least resistance and not have 2FA turned on. And that is for users who will even be aware of the change. Most people are inundated with messages no matter how Twitter communicates this news to its users (push notifications, email, sms, etc.). Many people will miss this news and only know their 2FA was turned off after it is too late. This move on Twitter's part will result in actual harm to people who are not tech-savvy and is an incompassionate move on behalf of the service.