Microsoft Security | Microsoft Authenticator
A Microsoft app for iOS and Android devices that enables authentication with two-factor verification, phone sign-in, and code generation
Authenticator Backup overwrite
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Ravirajan S
36
Reputation points
I accidentally overwritten my authenticator app's backup with blank data. And deleted all my backup by mistake. Now I can't recover my saved 2FA verification codes to login. Since all my other accounts require 2FA code to login, i facing serious issue with discord, epic games, ubisoft, and other account logins. Please some one help me with it.
Microsoft Security | Microsoft Authenticator
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P42K32 ! 1 Reputation point2022-10-19T20:45:01.577+00:00 This same thing happened to me. My phone broke so i got a new one. When i set up the authenicator app on my new device all of my accounts were missing when i tried to recover them it stated that their was nothing to restore. I thought this was strange because restoring this data worked for me when i used different phones
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Sanjay Mohanan 1 Reputation point2022-11-28T21:46:38.317+00:00 The app developers were warned about this issue 2 years ago. It is a badly designed app. They could have easily notified of the backup when logged in. Here the problem is mentioned https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/d279dcd7-5d61-4eb9-b3d0-9193791cb96f/begin-recovery-option-screen-hidden-behind-4-layers?forum=MicrosoftAuthenticatorApp
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Sudarshan Kadam 0 Reputation points2023-07-01T17:45:52.8466667+00:00 I switched my accounts to MS Authenticator because google didn't have backup. After factory restore, just like any other "SYNCED" apps, I logged in to the authenticator first. And VOILA it overwrote backup in the cloud. Great design guys. Really great design. Let me guess, there is no versioning of backups either, is there? Great.
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Like A Baouss 0 Reputation points2023-08-18T07:05:52.1966667+00:00 Well bravo, this happend to me yesterday. I cannot believe there is not even a warning message. I also did not see the recovery option to begin with. This is very painful. Going to swith to Google Authenticator which now also supports backups.
https://security.googleblog.com/2023/04/google-authenticator-now-supports.html
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Cendern 0 Reputation points2023-12-20T06:29:57.8566667+00:00 Not that it helps anyone here, but I'm glad this "answer" was created and you all kept it alive enough for me to find it in teh Googels. I'm in a similar situation and I was about to hit "turn on backup" thinking it would help me restore from my existing backup, but then I thought maybe I should read a bit first, and I'm so happy I did.
Thanks everyone! -
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Markus Baumgartner 0 Reputation points2024-01-27T20:13:34.98+00:00 Happened to me today. Lost all my secrets. It is too easy to overlook the "restore" option. I trusted MS with my secrets but they didn't fix this issue in years. What a poor app!
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Csepi 21 Reputation points2024-12-14T21:26:32.4633333+00:00 Dear Microsoft.
I know, the Restore option is there. But have you EVER learned about UX? The possibility of oversight of this little text with textsize of 10.... are you usually designing a product this bad, or was it necessary?I lost around 30 MFA accounts... the good thing I KNEW you will screw something up (I know, I scewed it up, I didn't see the small text near the very big blue button, sorry my fault of course, not yours....) and I always use a second MFA, Yubico in this case.
I just hate that I can't switch to another authenticator because of different company policies linked strictly to your account..... So I will regenerate everything again.... thanks for hours of work.
You know what? Next time when somebody with a backup log in into an empty account, just ask them if they want to recover from cloud or not.... is it that hard?
Peter
IT Consultant -
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pjgerardo.com 0 Reputation points2026-02-08T11:53:39.7666667+00:00 I just lost all my MFAs, don't know how many, but surely 30+ because of this design flaw.
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