Two years ago, Singaporeans were up in arms when the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) told the media that 1,560 SingPass accounts could have been accessed illegitimately.

To prevent such mishaps from occurring, IDA implemented a two-factor authentication (2FA) process for every SingPass account, in order to prevent such security breaches. They set a deadline for all Singaporeans to set up their 2FA by July 4.

And guess what?

[caption width="478" id="attachment_102705" align="aligncenter"] Source: IDA Facebook page[/caption]20 per cent of regular SingPass users — 400,000 of them! — still have yet to register for the 2FA as the deadline passed.

We are not talking about 400,000 SingPass users who are not tech-savvy and/or do not use their SingPass much.

We are talking about 400,000 laggards regular users — folks who are using the account frequently to maybe access the NS portal, myCPF portal or myHDB portal. And these folks have logged in to SingPass more than once a year, according to IDA's comments in TODAY.

What is the 2FA? Can SingPass be eaten?

SingPass (Singapore Personal Access) is a password set up for every citizen in March 2003 to access the 340-plus e-government services from 64 government agencies.

There are 3.3 million SingPass account holders in Singapore.

Judging from IDA's pictorial, there are 2 million active SingPass users in Singapore, since 80 per cent (1.6 million users) have signed up for 2FA.

In a 2FA system, a user needs to 1) enter a user-id and a password; and 2) a one-time password sent to his mobile phone/token to access his/her account.

Okay, new deadline set. 

The good news for these 400,000 regular users is that the IDA has given them a new deadline.

Users have a 30-day countdown grace period to register and activate their account, once they log in from July 5.

In other words, if you log in today (July 6) check your CPF account, you have to register for 2FA by August 5.

If you are one of the 400,000, why don't you spend some time this holiday to get yourself on it, and protect your SingPass account?

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Top image: Screenshot from video

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