Today I read an article in the NYTimes Wirecutter. I don’t know if the article is unclear or if creeping senility has finally caught up with me. The bolded text below seems to say, backing up 2FA is a good idea, but I don’t understand why. If I lose my iPhone can’t I just buy another, enter my Apple ID during the setup, and restore from the last iCloud backup?
Below the bolded text is a link to the NYTimes item containing the bolded text.
If you use a [two-factor authentication app (and you should), you can back that up, too. As much as I love chatting with the folks at The New York Times Security team, I’m sure they’d have preferred I’d done this rather than calling them in a panic unable to access my email. Duo Mobile, the 2FA app we recommend, offers a backup and syncing option that keeps you from being locked out if you lose your phone—just make sure to enable it.
Yes, you can. And so can I, because we backup to iCloud. She didn’t.
The first thing I noticed that seemed strange: I dropped my iPhone 6. I have to wonder if that isn’t a typo. The iPhone 7 came out toward the end of 2016.
I found this significant: figure out how to restore access to my two-factor authentication app so that I could use my email. In other words, the problem only happened because of using a two-factor authentication app. I do most of my email through the web site using a browser on my computer, so even if I was missing having email at my fingertips everywhere I could still use it.
Then we get to the heart of it. I didn’t back up my misplaced iPhone. Now the iPhone 6 seems less unusual.
I also, not often and on no particular schedule, connect my iPhone to my PC with a cable and use File Explorer to copy all the new photos to my PC. (I have a vague memory of running some sort of general backup with that connection, but too long ago to have details.)