Your pre-weekend public service announcement comes from Slack, the folks who run a wonderful group communications app used by a half-million daily users. The company announced today that there was “unauthorized access to a Slack database containing user profile information.” In an email to all users, Slack informed users that they’ve blocked the access and made changed to their technical infrastructure to keep this from happening in the future. The team recommends, however, that you look at enabling Two-Factor Authentication (AKA 2FA or two-step verification) for your account. From the email:
However, we have also just released Two Factor Authentication (“2FA”; also known as “two step verification”) and we strongly recommend that all users enable this feature, which provides an additional layer of security for their account. Additional details are available in our help center and you can enable 2FA directly on your account settings page.
Setting up 2FA is quite easy to do; it personally took me about two minutes to get it done. You’ll need to have one of two common iOS apps that can generate the necessary random code associated with your account, either Google Authenticator or Duo Mobile. For those of you who use the Slack iOS app to access your account from an iPad, you’ll want to choose Duo since it’s a Universal (iPhone and iPad) app.
