I just wanted to listen to some Tidal but two-factor had other ideas

[Steven P. Administrators]

On Sunday I was doing some cable management, including rehanging posters behind my computer desk (which is large, heavy and L shaped. Anyway, my computer was not hooked up and realising it was going to take me a little longer than I expected, I decided I was going to listen to a Tidal playlist on my Nvidia Shield (Dolby Atmos) home theater.

 

Here's how it all went down.

1. Fired up "Downloader" app searched for Tidal (I did not realise Tidal was actually in the Play Store for Android TV so I could have skipped the next three steps)
2. Tidal result in Play Store, but I'm not logged into Play Store in "Downloader" browser
3. Logged into Play Store, TV tells me unrecognised new device, In have to "approve" the login on my phone
4. Approved login on my phone
5. Install Tidal
6. Open Tidal to login, Tidal asks to enter code on link.tidal.com
7. Go to  link.tidal.com on phone
8. Need to login to Tidal, can't remember login details > try login with Facebook
9. Must login to Facebook (web) on phone (logs in)
10. Unrecognised device > use Code generator in the Facebook app to get a code to login via Facebook web
11. Spend 5 minutes wondering  where I can get a code
12. Enter code to login to Facebook (briefly forget what I was doing in the first place)
13. Oh yeah, login via Facebook on Tidal , Facebook returns some message about the app being in dev mode, cannot login via Facebook
14. Decide to do reset Tidal password so I can login "the old fashioned way" on my phone
15. Get email, tap on reset password link
16. Setup new password on Tidal
17. Login to Tidal (still via Phone)
18. Navigate to link.tidal.com (by this time, the code on the TV has timed out three times)
19. Enter code on TV
20. Logged into Tidal via Nvidia Shield TV app!

Thank you jebus for two factor! /s

[Usama Jawad96 Veteran]

I can relate to this so much. I understand the security benefits of MFA but just getting it to work is suuuuuuuuuuuch a chore sometimes.

[Sir Topham Hatt]

And this is it...  tech trying to be helpful but is actually obstructive.

Is 2FA worth the hassle it causes?

 

I've had various things like this with Google and having to use incognito mode because I want to log into another Google account that I don't want linked to my phone.  Then it has some sort of panic as I can't prove it's me...  I can't remember what it was anyway.

But then there are a lot of accounts I have that I don't really care if my password is guessed - online TV like BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub and 4OD are all examples of "well I'll just register again" - the latter two had temporary emails anyway that I now can't access.

 

Another great example is Microsoft and their passwordless accounts.
I changed over and it was fine.
Then when I came to install Windows 11, I lost the ability to auto log in when I boot up the PC.
Never really got to the bottom of it but I ended up re-creating a password and even then, it still wouldn't auto log in with it.  Had to use some sort of Power Toy to set it up.