7 Types of Accounts to Enable 2 Factor Authentication On

Banking, Finance, and Investment Accounts

Any account involving money management should be made a high priority on your list of accounts to secure with 2FA. If anyone ever accessed one of these accounts, it's possible that they could do anything with your money — transfer it from your account to another account, charge unwanted purchases to credit card number, change your personal details and more. 

Banks make sure to budget hundreds of millions of dollars to take care of fraudulent activity, and you'll get your money back as long as you notify your bank of any sign of fraud within 60 days, but nobody wants to have to deal with that in the first place — so look for 2FA in the account settings or security settings of all services where you do any banking, borrowing, investing or other type of financial activity.

Common financial account sources to look for 2FA:

• Checking and savings accounts
• Credit and debit card accounts
• Mortgage accounts
• Loan accounts
• Investment accounts
• Foreign currency accounts
• Tax filing service accounts
• Accounting and bookkeeping service accounts
• Online payment service accounts (such as PayPal and Venmo)
• Personal financial management service accounts (such as Mint.com)
• Billing and payroll service accounts

Utility Accounts

We all have those monthly utility bills to pay. While some people choose to make their bill payments manually, but others like yourself might sign up for automatic monthly charges to a credit card or other payment method via personal accounts on utility service websites.

If a hacker logged into your account, they could gain access to your credit card numbers or other payment information. The could steal it to use for their own fraudulent use or potentially even change your monthly plan — perhaps upgrading it for a more expensive cost to use it themselves while you end up paying for it.

Consider any accounts you have that store personal and financial information for paying your monthly bills. These would typically include communication services (cable TV, internet, phone) and possibly household utility services such as electricity, gas, water, and heat.

Popular utility services that are known to offer 2FA:

• Comcast / Xfinity
• Google Fiber
• Sonic
• Ting

Apple ID and/or Google Accounts

You can purchase apps, music, movies, TV shows and more from Apple's iTunes App Store using your Apple ID and the Google Play Store using your Google account. You can also store personal information on the many services linked to your Apple ID (such as iCloud and iMessage) and Google account (such as Gmail and Drive).

If anyone were to ever gain access to your Apple ID or Google account login details, you could end up with several unwanted purchases charged to your account or stolen personal information from your other linked services. All of this information is stored on Apple and Google servers, so anyone with a compatible device and your login details could instantly gain access to it.

Both Apple and Google have instruction pages that walk you through the complete steps you should take to set up 2FA on your Apple ID and Google account. Remember, you won't have to enter a verification code every time except for the very first time you log in on a new device.

Retail Shopping Accounts

It's easier and more convenient than ever to shop online nowadays than ever before, and while online retailers take consumer checkout and payment security very seriously, there's always the risk that user accounts could be compromised. Anyone who obtains your login details to your accounts on shopping sites could easily change your shipping address but keep your payment information, essentially charging purchases to you and having items shipped anywhere they want.

Although you might find it unlikely that smaller online retailers offer 2FA as an extra security option for their users, many larger retailers do indeed have it in place.

Popular subscription services that are known to offer 2FA:

• Amazon
• Apple
• Etsy

Subscription Purchase Accounts

Many people do their online shopping as needed on both large and small retail sites, but these days recurring subscription plans have grown to become more popular for everything from entertainment and food to cloud storage and web hosting. Since many subscription-based services offer different subscription plans, there's always the chance that hackers who happen to log into your account with your details could upgrade your subscription for a higher cost and start receiving their products or using their services for themselves.

Again, like many online retailers, not every subscription service is going to have 2FA as part of its security feature offering, but it's always worth checking.

Popular subscription services that are known to offer 2FA:

• Netflix
• Spotify
• Twitch
• Adobe
• Norton Security
• GoDaddy

Password & Identity Management Accounts

​Do you use a tool to store all your logins, passwords, and personal identification information? Many people do nowadays, but just because they exist to store and secure all your login details in one convenient place doesn't mean they're ultimately secure without 2FA enabled.

Let this be a reminder that even the place where you keep all your login details secure needs to be secured. In fact, if you use a password or identity management tool, this might be the most important place of all to look for 2FA.

If anyone ever obtained your details to get into your account, they'd gain access to login information for not only one account, but any accounts where you have information stored there — from your bank account and your Gmail account to your Facebook account and your Netflix account. Hackers could take their pick and choose to compromise as many of your accounts as they'd want.

Popular password and identity management tools that are known to offer 2FA:

• 1Password (currently in progress)
• Centrify
• Keeper
• LastPass
• OneLogin