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google / google-authenticator

Open source version of Google Authenticator (except the Android app)
Apache License 2.0
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iPhone restore lost #673

Open mbettan opened 5 years ago

mbettan commented 5 years ago

After upgrade from iPhone 6S to iPhone XR, I lost all my accounts. I tried a full backup restore from iTunes and iCloud without success.

When opening the application, it lost all my accounts and I have no backup. I was expecting this to be backup. Please help!!!!!!

MrPickles commented 5 years ago

Unfortunately Google Authenticator was made to not have backups for security purposes. :(

There are no account backups in any of the apps by design.

If you lost access to your Google Account, you can try to reset your codes by going through account recovery. For other websites where you were using Authenticator codes for 2FA, you'll have to go through the respective websites' recovery options.

tsmortenson commented 4 years ago

I have been adding the use of 2 factor authentication bit by bit over the years. Always careful to keep backups of my iPhone both local on itunes and on icloud. I had a hardware failure that required me to replace the phone this week. Doing a restore from icloud resulted in ALL of my accounts being deleted from Google Authenticator. I did a second restore from itunes and this time 3 out of 7 or so accounts were restored. Thank you for that. But the others are just gone. Unfortunately the ones that exist still are the only ones that I have printed rescue codes for.

Looking into this, I now see comments like it is not designed to be backed up and restored. But if that is true. This is a very dangerous tool to be using. You really need to be showing such warnings and advice for its use.

I will now start the process of trying to get into these various accounts again. But it seems I have shot myself in the foot badly by trying to be safe.

Sigh.

mbettan commented 4 years ago

Agreed, there should be a clear warning in the application. End user expects that a full backup being a backup. It's actually not by design, so the end user should receive a warning when creating a new account.