Blizzard's Battle.net Authenticator Goes One-Button

Blizzard's Battle.net Mobile Authenticator app is now less of a faff, simply showing "Approve" and "Deny" buttons for authorising logins. Previously, it'd generate a code folks would need to type out while logging in to play Overwatch, StarCraft II, and whatnot. It's a tiny change but removing any faff from security procedures is always good. If you already use the authenticator, hooray for less faff! If you don't use it because you don't like faffing about, mate, come on, how much simpler can it get?

Blizzard explain the new way in a blog post:

"Whenever a log in attempt occurs on your account you will be notified via the app and prompted to Approve or Deny the request. You can also approve log in requests with notifications on your mobile or smartwatch without even opening the app!"

That's nice and simple, that. Blizzard do also point out that, by default, you only need to authenticate a device once per week.

Only the iOS and Android apps are updated so far, mind - not Windows 10 Mobile.

Valve have also been pushing two-factor authentication - using more than one component to verify access, such as chip + PIN on cards or password + authenticator - but a little more aggressively. They've introduced trading delays on Steam for folks not using their authenticator, pushing folks to start using it. Their motivation is a combination of losing accounts sucking for players and dealing with complaints about losing accounts sucking for customer support departments.

While we're at it, you are also using something like KeePass or LastPass to generate and track unique and complex passwords for each account, right? Good, good.