Title: Authentication errors
Last modified: January 3, 2020

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# Authentication errors

 *  Resolved [bernieraffe](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bernieraffe/)
 * (@bernieraffe)
 * [6 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/authentication-errors-2/)
 * Using the latest version of Wordfence free version.
 * I had everything setup to to use 2 step verification and it had been working 
   fine until this morning.
 * Users couldn’t get logged in, seeing the message:-
    ‘An error was encountered
   while trying to authenticate’
 * I had setup 2FA so that it wouldn’t authenticate when logging in from my IP address,
   so I never saw this authenticate message when logging in from my own PC. When
   I tried from my phone using 4G, then I would receive this authenticate error.
 * I then disabled 2FA, but the problem persisted, I then deleted the Wordfence 
   plugin completely and yes, the problem was still there.
 * Is this a Wordfence problem please, even though it’s no longer present, there
   are still entries for Wordfence in the database. I can get logged in as a standard
   user when using my wi-fi connection, but still get the authenticate message when
   going in via 4G which suggests to me that 2FA is still active somehow, no other
   plugins are used for authentication.
 * Thanks for any help.
 * The page I need help with: _[[log in](https://login.wordpress.org/?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fwordpress.org%2Fsupport%2Ftopic%2Fauthentication-errors-2%2F%3Foutput_format%3Dmd&locale=en_US)
   to see the link]_

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

 *  Thread Starter [bernieraffe](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bernieraffe/)
 * (@bernieraffe)
 * [6 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/authentication-errors-2/#post-12291049)
 * I forgot to say that you can see the authentication message using any user id
   and password
 *  Thread Starter [bernieraffe](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bernieraffe/)
 * (@bernieraffe)
 * [6 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/authentication-errors-2/#post-12292359)
 * I’ve fixed this now.
 * It was a Wordfence issue, I set the option to delete all 2FA tables and settings
   on de-activation.
 * That cleared the error

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

The topic ‘Authentication errors’ is closed to new replies.

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 * 2 replies
 * 1 participant
 * Last reply from: [bernieraffe](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bernieraffe/)
 * Last activity: [6 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/authentication-errors-2/#post-12292359)
 * Status: resolved