Customer Ratings & Reviews

I really wanted to like the YubiKey 5 NFC that I was given to evaluate. I'm a big fan of multifactor (or two factor) authentication (MFA or 2FA in the jargon). Multifactor authentication relies on something you know (like a username/password pair) as well as something you have (for example, a phone to receive an SMS message or a phone app to generate a time based one time password - TOTP). I have several TOTP authenticators on my phone for various websites (e.g. OTP Auth, Norton VIP Access, or Google Authenticator). They all work pretty much the same - you enter your username/password pair, pull out your phone and bring up the proper app, and enter the six digit code that it generates (which typically changes every minute). Yubikey can automate this process, but as a big improvement, it supports FIDO2 (a very secure challenge response protocol) as well as the one-time password world. That's a big win. The problem is that it's really best used with a phone (for NFC) or a laptop (to plug in). If you're a desktop user like myself, then there's often something else plugged into the easily accessible USB port and you still have to touch the key to authenticate which involves serious contortions. Also, a single Yubikey isn't a good idea - you need two so that you have a backup. I have no idea why they don't sell these as pairs since a single Yubikey is very vulnerable to loss and you often (depending on the website) cannot use an alternate authentication method to get in if you lose your Yubikey. At any rate, I'm a bit paranoid so I never log in to finance sites using my phone or laptop connected via wifi. As a result, Yubikey isn't a big win for me.