What does every Bucknellian hate to do but have to do every day? Morning 8 classes? Nope, not for everyone. Driving through the heavy traffic? Nope, not for everywhere. Or maybe, going to the class you don’t want to take? Eh, might be, but we do like all of our professors! But there is one thing I hear lots of students and professors complaining about — — the Duo Mobile App.
During my first year in Bucknell, we enjoyed our short passwords towards our myBucknell accounts, and, as far as I know, no one got account stolen. And when it comes to my second year, message popped out that we have to change our passwords into long ones, at fewest 15 characters, and have to include uppercase, lowercase, number, and special characters. Hmm, it’s getting a little messier, but we could still do it. And when it comes to the third year, a new greenish App came to every Bucknellian’s life: the Duo Mobile Authentication.
The Duo Mobile App was suddenly labelled “required” by the school, and Bucknellian has to install the App in their phones, and bind their account with it. And every time you want to log into the myBucknell account, you have to…
Yeah, go through the Duo Mobile process! And sometimes…
Whoops, please do it again, said Duo Mobile.
And even worse, every day, your log-in status expires! Which means, you have to go through the Duo Mobile process once everyday, and per logging device.
And even even worse, if you happen to live in China, as I do, where many websites are banned, you have to use an vpn to go through this process! And in the meantime, using an vpn means a random virtual address each time, which also means, one whole Duo Mobile process per log-in! It could be once per hour, or once per half an hour, or once per minute!
Extra problems also come up when you lose your phone, and the only method you could take is to ask the tech desk for help!
So yes, the Duo Mobile really drives me crazy sometimes, and this is exactly why I consider it to be a “bad” design. But on the other hand, the Duo Mobile Security also “secures” our accounts in some sense, which makes it not “so bad”.
And by the way, there is how Duo Mobile does in the App Store…
It is indeed not made so “simple”, isn’t it.