Here ‘s a very cool “ and free! “ new app if you are concerned about online logins and security on your iPhone. It ‘s called VIP Access, and it ‘s from the solid and well-established online security outfit, Verisign.
Once you install VIP Access, and activate the extra security layer at any of its network sites, it provides a much more secure, multi-factor authentication routine for login to each site or sites you ‘ve activated it with. Once this is done, when you go to login to Paypal, for example, you enter your username and password, but then also get prompted for your 6-digit security code, which changes every 30 seconds (just like on the old RSA SecurID fobs used for secure network login) and is displayed in big bold form on the main screen of VIP Access.
There are a few steps to get things going once you install VIP Access
First you need to provide your phone number, so that you can receive a text message with an activation link.
Then you need to check out which sites you use are part of the VIP Security network (so they ‘ll let you implement this extra security layer). There are not very many as yet, with the two biggest names being Paypal and eBay. Here ‘s a graphic showing some of the member sites:
To see the list of member sites, and get further instructions on how to activate the extra security on them, go to:
https://vipmobile.verisign.com/wheretouse.v
You ‘ll need to visit each site you want to activate this on individually and go through the steps to turn it on “ including verifying your Credential ID (Paypal called this a serial number) and your security code “ both of these are displayed on the VIP Access main screen. That probably sounds much harder than it really is. On Paypal, this took under two minutes.
An important thing to note is that once you activate this security, it will be applied not just in your iPhone browser, but any time you login to the member site online via a desktop browser as well “ so you ‘ll need to keep the iPhone and VIP Access handy for that purpose.
For now, Paypal is the only member site that I use “ but I use it frequently, so I ‘m very happy to have turned on this extra security layer for it. I also love the concept of this app and hope that the number of participating sites will grow quickly. I ‘d love to see my bank adopt this system, for a start.
You can find VIP Access on the App Store now, and it ‘s a free app.
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