Lost your phone, and your two-factor codes with it
Without the phone, you cannot produce the codes. That does not mean the accounts are gone: there are several ways back in, from the quickest to the slowest.
First, secure what you can
- Lock or erase the phone remotely, with Find My on iPhone or Find My Device on Android.
- From a computer, sign in to your email account if you still can, and change its password. Email is how most other passwords are reset.
- If the phone was stolen with its SIM card, ask your carrier to block the line, so nobody can receive your text messages.
Getting back into each account
Restore a backup, if you have one
If you exported an Otter backup, install Otter on a new phone, open Settings, then Backup, choose Import from a file and enter your passphrase. Every account comes back at once.
Use a recovery code
When you turned on two-factor authentication, most services gave you a list of one-time recovery codes. Each one stands in for a code from the app, once. Look in your password manager, your printouts or your downloads.
Use another method you set up
A security key, a text message to a number you still have, or another device that is already signed in. Many services offer one of these on the sign-in screen, behind a link such as Try another way.
Go through account recovery
As a last resort, each service has a recovery process, which checks who you are some other way. It can take days, and it is slow on purpose: that delay protects you too.
If Otter was on the phone
Otter’s keys are encrypted on the phone and open only with your PIN, your face or your fingerprint. Someone who finds or steals the phone cannot read your codes, and wrong PIN attempts get slower and slower, even after a restart.
Otter has no copy of your keys and no server to restore them from. The only way to get them back is a backup you exported. That is the trade: nobody else can lose them, and nobody else can give them back.
So it never happens again
- Export an Otter backup, and export a new one whenever you add an account.
- Keep the passphrase on paper, away from the file.
- Save each service’s recovery codes somewhere other than the phone.
- Where a service allows it, add a second method, such as a security key.
Try Otter
Free on iPhone and Android. No account to create and nothing to sync: install it, scan your first QR code, and the code is on your screen.