Starting next
month, Twitter is taking away the SMS two factor authentication option away
from Twitter users except subscribers of Twitter Blue, hence making it a
Twitter Blue exclusive feature.
This means that only those who are willing to pay Twitter $8 a month will be able to keep their account safe from hacking. Explaining the reason behind its decision, Twitter says that it has “seen phone-number based 2FA be used - and abused - by bad actors.”
The explanation
seems odd, considering that Twitter’s new verification process in Blue is not
really authentic in itself. The verification criteria primarily includes paying
a fee, which means that any account, whether genuine or not, can be verified on
Twitter as long as it is paying a subscription fee.
Twitter further
adds that accounts that already utilize the 2FA method will have 30 days to
disable it. After 20 March 2023, the ability to use text messages for
2FA will be automatically disabled for non-subscribers.
