Date when SMS authentication codes will be phased out

[rickinwc]

Does anyone know if there is a planned date when multi-factor authentication via SMS will be phased out?

We have some users who are still using SMS for authentication codes, but it would be good to know if there's a date we should plan for migrating users over to LastPass.

[AbhishekYadav]

Hi,

There's no sunset date yet for phasing out SMS authentication. We will give enough heads-up if we ever do that.

[rickinwc]

I don't think that's accurate though. I recently set up a new user in our organization with an account and they were not given the option to use SMS but had to use LastPass instead.  This was the first time we had ever encountered this so I contacted support to ask if we could go back to using SMS. They told me that SMS was being phased out and will soon be removed from existing users who are already using it. Understandably, we would like to get everyone ready for that transition if it's happening in the near-future.

If that's not the case, then I'm not sure  why SMS would be removed as an option for new users. Was that a mistake? Should we still be able to use SMS instead of LastPass?

[KateG]

Hi @rickinwc sorry for the confusion. Support was correct, we are not offering SMS any longer. Currently, LastPass Authenticator is the only supported option (and is free to use). LastPass Authenticator supports SMS as a backup option. Check out this article for more information. 

[rickinwc]

Hi Kate. Thanks for the reply but I'm still not getting an answer to the question.

The question is: when will SMS be going away for existing users who are already using it?

Right now, I can't sign up new users with SMS but our existing users (those whose accounts were set up over the last couple years) are still getting their security codes via SMS. We're just trying to get some sense of when that will be going away also. One of your support people said it's going away in the near-future.

Is there a date for that transition?