Yahoo! Mail Finally Adopts 2-Step Authentication

Posted 12/21/2011 at 5:32am | by Pulkit Chandna

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Yahoo! may no longer be the force it once was, but it continues to be a key player in the webmail market. Here too it’s not much of a trend-setter, though. Yahoo! Mail finally adopted a "two-factor authentication" system last week, more than a year after Widows Live Hotmail and many months after Gmail began utilizing it to improve account security. Hit the jump for more.

“To thwart account compromise, Yahoo! is introducing a stronger user authentication feature that aims to prevent account hijackers with a stolen password from accessing a person’s account,” announced Andy Wu, a product manager at Yahoo!. “If you have a Yahoo! account, you can now further protect it by activating this new second sign-in verification feature from Yahoo! Account Info. As part of the process, you will be required to add a mobile phone number to your account and verify it via SMS.”

As part of this system, each suspicious sign-in attempt is greeted by a message asking the user to confirm their identity either by answering a secret question or entering a verification code sent by Yahoo! to the mobile phone associated with the concerned account.

This feature is only available to users living in the United States, Canada, India, and the Philippines at the moment. However, it will be extended to other countries over the next three month in a graduated fashion.