NAPERVILLE, IL — A local man who spent Saturday afternoon enabling two-factor authentication on all 34 of his online accounts as a security precaution was locked out of every single one of them by Sunday morning, sources confirmed.

Derek Paulsen, 41, began the project after watching a YouTube video titled “You Are One Password Away From Losing Everything.” By 4 p.m. Saturday, he had secured his bank, email, streaming services, and a Shutterfly account he forgot existed. By 9 a.m. Sunday, his authenticator app had been accidentally deleted, his backup phone number was a landline he no longer owns, and his recovery email is a Hotmail address from 2003 whose password he cannot remember.

“The accounts are more secure than they have ever been in history. I just can’t get into any of them.”

“Derek wanted to be responsible, and technically he succeeded,” said Paulsen’s wife, Renee, 39. “No one is getting into those accounts. Including Derek.”

Paulsen spent Sunday afternoon on hold with four separate customer service lines. A representative from his bank told him account recovery would require a notarized letter, a government-issued ID, and “patience.” His streaming service offered to mail a verification code to an address he moved out of in 2018.

“The system is working exactly as designed,” said Marcus Thill, 52, a cybersecurity consultant who reviewed the situation and declined to help. “He is very well protected from himself.”

At press time, Paulsen had successfully logged into one account — a Rewards card for a sandwich shop that closed in 2021 — and was treating it as a victory.