Activating your Authenticator in a new device

NotaryHub Team

New phone? Make sure your Authenticator still has codes to sign your documents

If you’ve already acquired your cloud-based signing certificate, then you will recall that the final step is to Activate your certificate by creating a 4-digit PIN, after which you’ll be presented with a QR code. You then scan this QR code from within your Authenticator app (as opposed to using your device’s camera to scan the code, instead, launch the Authenticator app and use the QR code scanner from within that app).

The data from the authenticator app is encrypted and tied to a specific device. When you switch to a new phone, the data from the old phone cannot be accessed or decrypted on the new device. The result is that your new phone will have the app, but the keys that existed in your old phone aren’t found in the new one.

If you still have access to your old phone, you may still transfer your authenticator codes to the new phone (NOTE: these codes don't automatically transfer, even if other phone data is transferred). If you don’t have access to your old phone, then you will need to re-scan the QR code to add the SSL.com authentication code to your new phone.

This article has two sections:

• I Don't Have Access to My Old Phone
• I Still Have Access To My Old Phone and Authenticator

I Don’t Have Access To My Old Phone

If you don’t have access to your old phone, you’ll need to visit our certificate partner, SSL.com, so that you can scan your QR code from there.

Before you start, you’ll need:

• The email address or user name that’s associated with your certificate
• Your SSL.com password
• Your 4-digit PIN associated with your certificate

Contact Notary Hub support if you need assistance with any of these.

To access the SSL.com certificate:

1. Visit https://ssl.com and click Login (look for a green icon that looks like a chess pawn in the upper right)
2. Enter your credentials (Login, which usually is the same as your email, and SSL.com password)
3. Once you log in, you’ll be presented with the SSL.com Customer Dashboard. This page presents a lot of technical details about your signing certificate; we can safely ignore these details.
4. At the bottom of this Customer Dashboard (Figure 1, below), you’ll see your account information. In the right column, you’ll see something that looks like “1 Year Personal ID Document Signing” (your certificate may have a longer term than 1 Year). Under this, you’ll see a link that looks like this:
   (CN=YOURNAME,GN=YOURNAME,SN=YOURNAME,C=US)
   NOTE: This is the second link from the top. Do not follow the one that begins (CN=eSigner LLC … ); that is not relevant here.
5. Follow the link to view your certificate information.
6. Under the CERTIFICATE DETAILS (if this section is not expanded, click “Show Details” to expand it) you’ll find a button “Show QR Code”. (Figure 2, below)
7. To reveal your QR code, enter the 4 Digit PIN in the form field above, then click “Show QR Code”
8. When you see the QR code, open your Authenticator app on your new phone and click + to scan the QR code
9. When you are done, you will see eSigner in the list of codes inside your Authenticator app.

Figure 1 (above): SSL.com Customer Dashboard 

Figure 2 (above): SSL.com Certificate Details

I Still Have Access To My Old Phone and Authenticator

There are a variety of Authenticator apps that are compatible with our system. Here, we'll provide reference links to some of the most popular apps:

Google Authenticator

To transfer codes from your old device's Google Authenticator app to your new device, refer to the official Google documentation here. See the section "Transfer Google Authenticator Codes to new phone".

Microsoft Authenticator

To transfer codes from your old device's Microsoft Authenticator app to your new device, refer to Microsoft's support documentation here.

Another Authenticator

If you use another Authenticator app not listed, your best bet is to go to the support documentation for the app you're using, or search Google for "transfer authenticator to new phone YOUR_APPNAME_HERE" or similar to find helpful articles specific to your setup.