Twitter Now Paywalls SMS 2FA Behind Its $8 Blue Subscription

Just like in real life, Twitter thinks you should pay for your personal (account’s) protection.

Beginning March 20, Twitter will require users to pay for its premium “Twitter Blue” subscription in order to use SMS-based 2FA (two-factor authentication). For the uninitiated – 2FA is a feature intended to protect accounts against hijacks by using a second factor (such as SMS, your phone, security key) to verify the legitimacy of any login sessions.

So, it really happened. #Musk is going to start charging #Twitter users to use text-message-based two-factor authentication. This is what I got after I signed in just now with text-message-based 2FA. pic.twitter.com/pYtSAlzcmz
— Devon Heinen (@DevonHeinen) February 18, 2023

“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,” Twitter wrote in its blog post.

The company is giving everyone a 1-month grace period to voluntarily disable SMS 2FA, after that date the feature will get automatically disabled, unless the user pays $8 per month for its Blue subscription. However, it is widely known that SMS 2FA are often the most prone to attacks (i.e. SIM swap attacks) – as hackers can trick telco providers with a cloned phone number to redirect or intercept any verification code to their devices.

If you’re concerned about your account’s security, fret not – other methods of 2FA are still available to use for free, and are much more secure. Among those options are using an authentication app, and you can pair it with the app of your choice, such as Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator to authorize logins.

Source: PCMag

Pokdepinion: Paywall or not, if you have SMS 2FA – consider moving to another method such as app authentication for better security.