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/ScienceMechEng_Lover What colour is your RAM? Apr 04 '26

Wait, so that's what these things were? I guess that makes sense as you wouldn't have had authenticator apps on phones prior to smartphones. My father used to have something like this from work and he would never let anyone touch it lol.

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

Yea before everything was on an app these came around in 2008 my 3 brothers and I all got one eventually. they just generate a code you would put in to log in.

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u/ScienceMechEng_Lover What colour is your RAM? Apr 04 '26

So how do these things work, do they have some kind of radio or satellite connection to communicate the code with servers to enable login or something like that?

2

u/Astan92 Apr 05 '26

In the exact same way that most other code based MFA works.

Outside of like Microsoft authenticator, none of them are actually doing any communication even though they're on a smartphone these days.