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It's time to secure your Amazon account with two-factor authentication

Relying solely on passwords to secure important accounts may be outdated, but until they're gone for good your best alternative is locking things down with two-factor authentication: Amazon. Considering you probably already have a credit card or other payment info stored there, it just makes sense to add an extra layer of security that makes sure it's really you logging in. The only problem? Until recently Amazon didn't have any option to support the feature, but now it does. I noticed the new option while updating my password last night (also a good security idea), and it was only enabled for the general public very recently.

Once it's enabled -- check out the instructions here, or just head to your account settings page and look for "Advanced Security Settings" -- logging in requires something you know (your password) and something you have (your phone, in this instance to get the code from an app like Google's Authenticator or via text message). Now, even if someone finds out your password then they only have part of the information needed for access.

There are many ways to make sure all of your information online is as secure as possible, and using two-factor authentication along with unique passwords for every website are two of the most highly recommended ones. To make sure you're using it everywhere the option exists, take a look at the list of services that support it like Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Steam and Dropbox on TwoFactorAuth.org. There's also an instant tweet button so you can shame/pester those that still don't -- like Mega, WhatsApp, Aol Mail (doh!) and PlayStation Network.

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