What is OTP? Understanding OTP correctly.

When you make online transactions or sign up for a social media account such as Facebook, Zalo, Gmail, etc., you are often required to provide an OTP to ensure that the transaction or registration is more securely protected. So, what is an OTP?

I. What is an OTP?

OTP stands for One Time Password, meaning a password that is used only once. An OTP is usually a sequence of characters or numbers sent by the service provider like a bank, Facebook, etc., to your phone number or email.

OTPs are often used for two-factor authentication in online transactions, verification of personal accounts, thereby preventing and limiting risks such as password loss or hacker attacks.

The purpose of an OTP is to authenticate one more time before proceeding to the final step of a transaction or verifying some account registration. This shows that OTPs are extremely important, and you should not share your OTP with anyone, even the entity that provided you the OTP.

In reality, there have been many cases of money or accounts being lost because people did not realize the importance of OTPs and inadvertently trusted and provided their OTPs to scammers, so my advice is that you should never send your OTP to anyone you do not know.

A characteristic of the OTP is that it has a very short lifespan, about 30 seconds to 2 minutes. If you do not enter the correct OTP within that time, the OTP will expire, and you will need to request a new one.

II. Types of OTPs today

Currently, there are 4 types of OTPs:

• SMS OTP: An OTP is sent via a text message to the phone number you registered with the bank, Facebook, Zalo, etc.
• Voice OTP: Instead of an OTP being sent via a text message, you will receive a phone call with a pre-recorded voice providing you the OTP.
• Token: The OTP Token type is a device provided by banks to registered individuals. Those who want to use OTP Token will have to pay an additional fee to get this device.
• Smart OTP: Instead of being provided a device like the OTP Token, individuals are provided with an app. And of course, you would also have to pay a fee to have this app installed on your smartphone.