For those of you following on the recent password security buzz that’s been going around for the past couple days, Matt Cutts has a good FAQ on using the Google two-factor authentication.

Robert over at Gridwriter has posted a link to how to set up two-factor authentication for Google services. This is in the wake of Mat Honan’s being hacked and losing a bunch of data. Despite the fact that the hacking was not caused by a lack of two-factor authentication on Mat’s part, the Internet has woken up and started battening down the hatches.

I’ve gone through the process myself and it’s painful enough for me to feel like I’m actually doing something! I had to reauthenticate gmail on my phone, iPad and in Mail.app.

I’m going to set this up for my good lady as well, and my kids. It’s time for the Internet to sit up and take notice that, although we know what we should be doing, we very often can’t be bothered.

Oh, and to quote Marco of Instapaper[^1]:

Backing up is easy and cheap. Do it. Right now.

[^1] we don’t say dot com