Advanced sign-in security to protect your AdWords account

Has anyone you know lost control of their online accounts? Cases like the "Mugged in London" scam demonstrate why it's important to take steps to help secure your activities online. If you reuse the same password on multiple sites and one of those sites gets hacked, or your password was stolen through a phishing scam, it can be used to access some of your most closely-held information.

We continually strive to develop solutions to prevent security breaches like these. So last year, we developed an advanced opt-in security feature for Google Accounts called 2-step verification. This feature makes your Google Account (and thereby also your AdWords account) significantly more secure by helping to verify that you're the real owner of your account. It does this by requiring two independent factors for authentication, much like you might see on your banking website: your password, plus a code obtained using your phone.

To make your AdWords account more secure, you can apply this 2-step verification to your Google account. While this is an extra step, it's one that significantly improves the security of your AdWords account because it requires the powerful combination of both something you know—your username and password—and something that only you should have—your phone.

Learn more about 2-step verification and get started at our Help Center. And for more about staying safe online, see our ongoing security blog series or visit http://www.staysafeonline.org/. Be safe!

Posted by Andy Lutz, Inside AdWords crew