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Any Way to Save Google Authenticator Information to Local Device?

persistentone

Well-Known Member
Like everyone else I have been forced to upgrade Google Authenticator to the new version that Google has connected to cloud accounts. I do not want to put two factor information in the cloud. Is there any way to export the two-factor information on my phone to an SDcard or to a file on my local phone file system? I only find a function to "transfer accounts" which requires you to go through the cloud.

I want to confirm, this application is not secretly making copies to the cloud until I have explicitly enabled cloud backup?
 
As far as I know, codes are saved local. The cloud backup is in case you lose your local codes (hence cloud backup to restore them again).

Click in your picture and "use without an account". < If you lose your codes, no way to retrieve them.
 
There are other authenticator apps out there, so another option is just to use one of them. Certainly some of them have better security features than Google: password/biometric locking of the app, encrypted backups, that sort of thing.

As it happens a major international lab I work at actively discourages use of Google Authenticator for 2FA precisely because of Google's unencrypted cloud syncing of keys, the same reason you don't want to turn the cloud connection on.
 
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