My 2FA recovery codes were in an encrypted note I couldn't open
Last month I locked myself out of my email because the password manager update wiped my saved logins and the recovery codes were sitting in an encrypted file I made with a key I forgot. Took me 4 days of calling support and digging through old backups to get back in. Anyone else keep recovery stuff in layers of security that end up biting you?
The trick is redundancy. I keep one copy on paper in a fire safe and one in a plain text file on an old usb stick. Nothing encrypted, nothing that needs a key I might forget.
Layers sound smart until you're locked out of all of them. Sometimes dumb and simple is the whole point.