Amazon and Apple clearly need to institute security policy changes to better protect their users. And Honan made mistakes of his own, most notably not backing up his Mac regularly. But the hackers initial entry point into Honans digital life was through, of all things, the forgot password functionality offered by Gmail. When they first plunked Honans email address into that form, Gmail displayed a redacted version of Honans MobileMe account: m""""n@me.com. Honan has plenty of if only's on his mind, but one biggieto quote Honans story for , is this: If he had used two-factor authentication for Gmail, everything would have stopped here.

(Note: Google calls it two-step authentication, but two-factor authentication is just as common a name. Well use them interchangeably.)

First, lets clarify what two-step authentication actually means. In Googles case, it works this way: If you enable two-factor authentication, when you next log in to your Gmail account, youll first proceed as you always doby providing your username and password. But before you get to your inbox, Google will next demand a separate code.

Of course, you wont know what the code is offhand. Thus, for the second factor of authenticating that you really are who youre claiming to be, Google will send a text message to your phone containing the six-digit code to use. (As well discuss later, there are numerous other options for getting a six-digit code.)