Twitter To Charge for SMS Two-Factor Authentication #GeekLeap

Twitter customers who safe their accounts utilizing textual content message will lose the additional layer of safety after March 20 until they modify their two-factor authentication methodology or pay for the platform’s subscription service.

Two-factor authentication permits folks to guard their accounts even when somebody has stolen their password. Twitter customers who’ve this safety course of enabled are in a position to log into their account after they enter their password and a code they obtain by means of a textual content message or an authenticator app. They will additionally use a safety key.

The corporate mentioned in a blog post it’s not permitting “accounts to enroll within the textual content message/SMS methodology of 2FA until they’re Twitter Blue subscribers.”

“To be clear, two-factor authentication continues to be not required to log into Twitter, though we extremely encourage customers to allow it. This alteration simply restricts the 2FA strategies obtainable for accounts not subscribed to Twitter Blue,” Twitter Assist tweeted on Friday. Twitter Blue, the platform’s subscription service, prices $8 per 30 days in the event you subscribe by means of the net or $11 a month in your cell gadget.

Twitter customers can change their two-factor authentication app by means of the account’s settings. As soon as customers click on “safety and account entry,” there’s three completely different choices listed in a bit for two-factor authentication.

Twitter’s announcement got here hours after Platformer’s Zoë Schiffer tweeted that the social network deliberate to make this transformation. It is one other instance of how Twitter is attempting to entice extra customers to subscribe to Twitter Blue as advertisers pull again spending after billionaire Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover of the corporate final 12 months. The Data reported earlier this month that Twitter has roughly 180,000 subscribers within the US so the service would not look like common among the many platform’s customers. The corporate has tried to get extra folks to subscribe by providing a coveted blue checkmark, longer tweets and different options.

The change additionally comes as Twitter faces extra scrutiny and whistleblower complaints about how the corporate is not doing sufficient to safeguard the safety of customers. Final 12 months, Twitter customers complained that two-factor authentication wasn’t working correctly and the corporate mentioned it was wanting into situations the place SMS codes weren’t being delivered.

Utilizing a textual content message for two-factor authentication, Twitter mentioned in a weblog publish, has been “used – and abused – by dangerous actors.” Hackers have tried to entry codes despatched by means of textual content message by transferring an individual’s cellphone quantity to a different gadget in what is named SIM swapping. 

Twitter customers who disable textual content message 2FA is not going to routinely have their cellphone quantity disassociated from their account however can replace their quantity within the account’s settings, the corporate mentioned.