![free-encryption.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmPGmpN7Zym2tscQAL88n3RX6Dy5QdguZGvxoJ32qPSvtK/free-encryption.jpg)

I had to figure this out the hard way, but if you decide to use google's authentication for 2 factor authentication and your phone decides to crap-out you might be out of luck. Expect to wait countless hours to verify your identity and get those codes reset by support.

Instead what you can you is store the seed/key for the 2 factor authentication in plain text, and encrypt it with a passphrase. This way, if your phone gets reset you can just go back to your file and restore the 2FA code from the seed.

If you're in linux this is pretty easy...All you have to to is:

1. Create a file with all the 2FA seed/keys you need.
2. Encrypt the file with openssl: 
openssl aes-256-cbc -salt -e -a -in  keys.txt -out keys.enc
3. Destroy the original text file: shread -n 10 keys.txt
4. Decrypt the file openssl aes-256-cbc  -d -a -in keys.enc -out keys.enc.txt
Restore the 2FA codes, and then:
5. Destroy the text file: shread -n 10 keys.enc.txt