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Fortnite has a giveaway if you enable two-factor authentication

It takes two-factor to tango.

Alfred Ng Senior Reporter / CNET News
Alfred Ng was a senior reporter for CNET News. He was raised in Brooklyn and previously worked on the New York Daily News's social media and breaking news teams.
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Alfred Ng
2 min read
fortnite

You can get a free Fortnite dancing emote if you implement this security measure.

 Epic Games

Dance like nobody is watching you type your password. 

Fortnite: Battle Royale, a massively successful third-person online shooting game, is offering the "Boogie Down" dance emote for its players if they enable two-factor authentication. 

The security measure is one of the simplest ways to protect an account from hackers: Even if someone stole your password, they'd still need the second factor -- whether it's a text sent to your phone, a PIN sent to your email or a physical security key -- to gain access. While two-factor authentication provides an extra layer of security, experts say that it's been a challenge getting people to actually use it.

A Duo Security survey from last November found that more than half of Americans had never even heard of two-factor authentication. With Fortnite's massive audience -- more than 125 million players -- the giveaway opens up the security tool to a much more mainstream crowd. 

It's unclear how successful the promotion has been so far. A spokesman for Epic Games said that's not information the company would share. 

Watch this: Fortnite on Android: How to download it safely

If you want to enable two-factor authentication for the emote, you can go to your account settings on the Unreal Engine's website and look for "Password and Security." Epic Games allows you to enable two-factor authentication through email or an app. 

While Fortnite is promoting this security feature, Epic Games was widely criticized by security experts after it decided to take the game off the Google Play Store and encourage Android players to sideload the app instead.

The concern was that hackers would use that opportunity to create fake Fortnite apps and trick people, and in June researchers found that to be the case. On Aug. 14, Craig Williams, a security researcher with Talos Intelligence Group, tweeted that 30 percent of the top Android malware samples were fake versions of Fortnite.

First published Aug. 23, 6:33 a.m. PT
Update, 10:38 a.m.: Includes response from Epic Games.

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