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Dropbox Adds Two-Factor Authentication
angry tapir writes "File-sharing service Dropbox is now offering two-factor authentication, a system that makes it much harder for hackers to capture valid credentials for a person's account. Dropbox, one of the most widely used web-based storage services, said last month it planned on introducing two-factor authentication after user names and passwords were stolen from another website and used to access accounts."
Back when OpenID was popular the argument was that you can outsource your authentication to a service that actually has a clue about security. Back then, though, none of the popular identity providers actually did anything better than username/password. (With the exception of MyOpenID, but they were always kinda niche.)
Now that I've embraced Google's two-factor auth -- accepting a little inconvenience for a little more security -- I find it useful that when I log into Google properties I only need to do the two-factor stuff once in a while, rather than for every single service. Two-factor auth *is* less convenient, but if you have single sign-on then you can make it less so.
If the latest trend is for every service to implement its *own* two-factor auth then this is going to get much less convenient. I'd sooner see services like DropBox just integrate with Google's auth (and with anyone else who has a decent auth system) and let users benefit.