Australian government tells citizens to turn off two-factor authentication

Well that's a contender for overblown fear mongering headline of the week. Let's try again, headlining it "Australian government website encourages users to downgrade their account security by turning off TFA". I know, I'll generate less outrage, but on the bright side it's factually accurate, which is a lot more than you can say for the original (for a start, you don't need to be an Australian citizen to use a mygov account).

> The reasoning behind myGov's suggestion is understandable: some tourists will swap their Australian SIM cards to local ones while on holiday. Once this is done, they won't be able to receive myGov security codes without reinstalling their Australian SIMs, which is a hassle.

Also relevant http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/consumer-security/taxpaye...

Security isn't a strong point with these people, which is amazing for a portal that has literally every relationship you have with the Aus government …

As someone who started using 2fa only yesterday, I was wondering whether it would have been possible for the Australian government to have an app-based token as an alternative? How is that compared to hassles of text-based tokens when someone if out of the country?

Edit: grammar.