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Because lots of us upgrade phones every couple years, or have dropped a phone and had it break, or get water in it or something.

It's all too easy to realize after the fact you needed to transfer something between the old phone to the new phone to keep the authenticator working. Sometimes that's not available (phone damaged), or don't realize you need it until after you've already sent the phone in for trade in.

So yes, they are user unfriendly.



> Because lots of us upgrade phones every couple years, or have dropped a phone and had it break, or get water in it or something.

This is just a matter of using one of the many TOTP authenticators which allow backups of the keys.

If people drop or lose their phones, do they lose all their contacts, photos, passwords? I bet not. I am pretty sure this is a solved problem by now.

Moreover, even if you do lose the keys, that's what account recovery processes are for.




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