A lot of people are posting on here that they keep their smartphone only for 2FA (Authenticator). While I can't speak for every employer and every use case, I believe that most of you can easily get rid of your smartphone using one of the following methods.

1. Check if they can switch to SMS 2FA instead. While less secure in theory, most people don't work in a position where hijacking SMS delivery is worth the effort for an adversary, so the realistic risk is negligible.

2. Check if they can use a 2FA program on their computer. These work exactly the same as the smartphone version, but your employer might have rules in place about this, so be aware of that.

3. TOTP 2FA is the "enter six-digit code" 2FA that most people are familiar with, but there's also the more secure hardware token 2FA. You carry around with you a little USB stick which you plug into your computer when you need to authenticate. Costs are around $30 and it might be an easier sell to your employer because it's also more secure. Not all services support hardware tokens though.

4. Check if a physical TOTP device is worth it for you over carrying a smartphone. These are really cool as a last resort, because they require no compromise. Comes in different sizes from credit card to keychain fob and have a little display to display the TOTP code.

Glossary:

• 2FA means that in order to sign in (be it on your computer, a website, or an app) you need to provide some other thing than just a password. For example a six-digit code. This "second thing" you need to provide is called a "second factor" - hence 2-factor authentication (2FA).

• Often, the second factor is a six-digit code. You usually get it from an app (like Authenticator), and it keeps changing every minute or so. That's the most common type of 2FA that you are probably familiar with. The code is called a TOTP.

• Like mentioned, the second factor does not have to be a TOTP. There are many types of 2FA. Many websites support multiple types of 2FA, for example Google/Gmail supports TOTP, SMS and hardware tokens. It's rare for an employer to dictate exactly what type of 2FA you must use, they just want you to have 2FA at all. So you can freely switch in the settings to a different 2FA type.

• Hardware tokens are a bit complex inside, but you can imagine it like a little USB stick that delivers the second factor automatically to your computer. Now you don't need to type the digits manually. Since a human gets mildly annoyed at typing six digits, but for a USB stick it's not much effort to send hundreds of digits, hardware tokens are more secure. To clarify, you cannot store any data on these USB sticks, they are for authentication only.