Authenticator will overwrite accounts with same username when scanning QR code on iOS - Not helpful in an Enterprise environment

Question

Hi Microsoft,

When adding an account to iOS Authenticator via QR code, it will overwrite any account with the same username (which is very likely as this is normally a user's email address).

I believe the fix, sorry, I mean workaround for this is to use the Secret Key from the Identity Provider and manually type this into the Authenticator app during setup.

Unfortunately, this is not very helpful in an enterprise environment, especially when the average end user rarely knows anything about the inner workings of Authentication, and seeing a random string of characters is intimidating.

The QR code scanning function is there for a reason, and it looks like this is not usable for what I assume is a massive proportion of your users (on iOS).

A number of other posts have been made on the subject within the last year, e.g. these posts:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/198304/microsoft-authenticator-app-overrideoverwrite.html?ns-enrollment-type=Collection&ns-enrollment-id=e20nf67mqzno8o
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/395773/ios-microsoft-authenticator-bug-multiple-accounts.html?ns-enrollment-type=Collection&ns-enrollment-id=e20nf67mqzno8o
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/677703/mircrosoft-authenticator-overwritesoverrides-the-f.html?ns-enrollment-type=Collection&ns-enrollment-id=e20nf67mqzno8o

This is a bug on an existing feature, and not a feature request, so what would be the proper channels for the community to show their interest in this bug being fixed?

Happy for someone in the community to point me in the right direction if there is a way we can log this as an official bug, rather than posting a question for the community to handle and advise workarounds.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Many thanks
C

Answer 1

Did you ever find a way around this please?

Answer 2

Hi,

We have had the same problem:

We use Microsoft Authenticator App to log in to Office 365 / Computers. We also have a customer facing website where we have Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) enabled. When scanning the QR code into Microsoft Authenticator App for website, it overwrites the first entry for “Office 365” is there any way to avoid this.

There explanation was (04 Jul. 23):

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I checked with my internal resources and since the account has the same UPN, the only workaround for this is to use the manual sign in method: Manually add an account to the Microsoft Authenticator app - Microsoft Support

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The workaround is not suitable for us. There are no official documents listing the iOS error, which would have been helpful to point our clients to.

It can’t only be us with this issue.

Note: we do not have this issue with android phones.

NB

Plan and troubleshoot User Principal Name changes in Azure Active Directory - Microsoft Entra | Microsoft Learn

Answer 3

I have the same issue which overwrited another system access. I have to reset MFA to regain access. Quite annoying.

i probably have to give up Microsoft Authenticator in this case.