Authy for desktop has officially reached end of life (EOL) status, with the service now fully shut down and users forcibly logged out.
Authy is Twilio’s two-factor authentication (2FA) offering, built to protect Twilio user accounts by providing an extra layer of security when users log in to the popular communications platform.
Having announced the change back in January, Twilio originally slated Authy's EOL date for March 19 of this year. The desktop version continued to work past this point, though users were greeted with warnings and prompts to switch to the mobile version.
The last update to the product increased the number of rounds of “password-based key derivation” for seed encryption to limit brute-force hacking capabilities.
Upon reaching EOL, Twilio stated, the Authy desktop app will be “invalidated” and the device will be removed from the Authy account. This pops up the message “device removed” followed by “this device has been removed from your Authy account” and an invitation to log in again.
On the registration screen, users are greeted by a similar error informing them that Twilio Authy Desktop is “no longer supported.”
Some users expressed exasperation about their accounts being “invalidated” in posts to Reddit, with one exclaiming that they “bricked the app for me, too!” There was also concern from some users that tokens had been lost in the process.
This comes in contrast to the firm’s statement as it claimed that, provided users had the ‘backup’ feature enabled, tokens would “automatically sync up” between devices as users undergo the transition.
Twillio extended advice to its user base, “strongly” recommending that users switch to using the platform’s mobile apps as an alternative.
“These top-rated apps offer similar or better features for securely storing your authenticator account tokens, and are fully supported and regularly updated,” Twilio stated.
Should users still want to use a desktop-based authenticator, Twilio recommends a handful of other platforms, though the firm is careful to state that it doesn’t have “affiliation” with any of these products.
