E*Trade 2-Factor Authentication Key Fob

As part of my E*Trade Bank account, I received a key fob to make logging in more secure. It's a rebadged RSA key fob that generates a unique ID every 60 seconds. As part of authenticating with the service you need the ID and your password. This is (currently) an opt in program so if you don't think it's worth the trouble, you can continue to use a password. E*Trade security has been gradually getting better over the years (when I first opened an account with them about 8 years ago it was terrible - you were limited to a 6 digit numeric password if I recall correctly) and this is a big improvement. I'm very pleased to see an online bank that is actually making account security a priority. The devil with these things is in the details - if you lost the key fob and want access to the account they need to have some way to let you have access which most likely involves relying on personal information (I haven't tried it yet).

The real problem with the key fob is what happens when every high security site requires them - how many of these things can I carry on a key chain? Answer: 1! You really need one of these devices that can generate multiple secure IDs for multiple services. Another alternative would be to have a single sign-on service that managed all of this but given the problems (technical, philosophical, etc) that Microsoft Passport have run into, the former seems more likely to happen.