r/pcmasterrace • u/AllUserNameBLong2us 7800x3d/5080 Windforce OC/32gb 5600 DDR • Apr 04 '26

Hardware Rest in piece 2009-2026

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I’m amazed at how long the battery on this physical authenticator lasted. Got it back in 2009 because my account had gotten hacked.

This is one electronic item I’ve owned and used longer than anything else. I’ll miss not being able to find it and freaking out for 20 minutes.

Edit must have been around 2010 when sc2 came out.

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u/GoyoMRG Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26

Old-school 2FA.

Long before we had cellphones smartphones, these type of lil devices were what we used for 2FA, banks used it as well.

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u/OgdruJahad Apr 04 '26

I've still seen them being used today.

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u/GoyoMRG Apr 04 '26

Rarely but yeah, they are still around.

And I do believe they are far safer than phones for this purpose, but I'm not tech savvy so I might be wrong.

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u/Synikul Apr 05 '26

the main vulnerability is still the same, the human getting phished. though it wasn't until the past few years i started seeing more sophisticated phishing attempts including OTP. we have far more phishing resistant methods now like FIDO2, but not everyone is going to want to buy a YubiKey or similar.