Sunday, May 17, 2009

Verisign VIP for iPhone


I've been using the PayPal "football" for some time now to secure my ebay and PayPal accounts. Two factor authentication is fairly natural for me as my various jobs have required them since ~1997, so it doesn't seem like too onerous a burden. Verisign offers back end authentication as well to many websites, and you can use the dual-factor model with your OpenID.

Recently a friend pointed out to me that Verisign had put an application into the iPhone App Store that provides a virtual "token". I went and downloaded it immediately. My main problem with the football is that I just don't want to carry that much crap on my keys all the time. I like to have a car key and a house key and the remote-lock dongle, and nothing else; the 'football' tends to ride in the computer bag. This means if I'm not near the computer bag, and I want to bid on ebay, I get to go and GET the computer bag.

Since I always have my iPhone with me, I no longer have to worry about it. The App is free, and works flawlessly so far. Its functionality is so simple as to be obvious - touch the icon, it opens the app with the serial number of the VIP token and the current six-digit code. I *highly* recommend it to anyone who wants to do personal dual-factor authentication.

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