Elon Musk is once more in the crosshairs of the public after Twitter users woke up Saturday morning to find that an essential security measure for their accounts was removed. Two-factor authentication via SMS, one of the more normalized security measures for online security, will now exist behind the Twitter Blue paywall and people are letting Musk have it.
While the mandate didn’t come from Elon Musk directly, fears were confirmed by a new post on Twitter’s blog explaining the new move and how two-factor authentication via SMS will change going forward.
From the Twitter blog:
While historically a popular form of 2FA, unfortunately we have seen phone-number based 2FA be used – and abused – by bad actors. So starting today, we will no longer allow accounts to enroll in the text message/SMS method of 2FA unless they are Twitter Blue subscribers. The availability of text message 2FA for Twitter Blue may vary by country and carrier.
Non-Twitter Blue subscribers that are already enrolled will have 30 days to disable this method and enroll in another. After 20 March 2023, we will no longer permit non-Twitter Blue subscribers to use text messages as a 2FA method. At that time, accounts with text message 2FA still enabled will have it disabled. Disabling text message 2FA does not automatically disassociate your phone number from your Twitter account. If you would like to do so, instructions to update your account phone number are available on our Help Center.
Twitter’s explanation did not seem to calm the fears or criticism from the platform’s massive pool of users and many are lashing out saying that this is another tactic from Musk to tear down the once-mighty space.
Keep scrolling to see the reactions to Twitter’s new two-factor authentication via SMS rules and Elon Musk below.
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Photo: NurPhoto / Getty
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