On February, 15th, Twitter announced that users will be charged for SMS two-factor authentication service. Only user’s with Twitter Blue will have this feature turned on.
This will, of course, impose a security challenge to those relying in SMS 2FA to access their account, leaving their accounts vulnerable as they will could be accessed by password only. Twitter claims that SMS 2FA could be benefited by bad actors, SMS 2FA could be leveraged by hackers in what is known as SIM-swapping attack , which is a type of social engineering attack in which a hacker tricks a mobile carrier into transferring a victim’s phone number to a SIM card controlled by the attacker. This enables the attacker to intercept two-factor authentication codes and gain access to the victim’s accounts. In this post, we will explore ways to keep your twitter account secure with zero money!.
Our approach is to keep using 2FA, but instead of doing it using SMS, we are going to use online 2FA apps, such as Google Authenticator, or Microsoft authenticator. This way, instead if receiving 2FA codes via SMS, you can generate a code using an authenticator app on your phone.
Steps to securing your twitter
To add an authentication app to Twitter, you can follow these steps:
- First, download an authentication app on your mobile device.
- Log in to your Twitter account on the web using your computer.
- Click on your profile picture in the top right corner and select “Settings and privacy” from the drop-down menu.
- In the left-hand menu, select “Security and account access.”
- Scroll down to “Two-factor authentication” and click on “Set up.”
- Twitter will ask you to verify your password. Enter it and click “Verify.”
- On the next screen, select “Authentication app” as your verification method and click “Start.”
- Follow the prompts to scan the QR code that appears on the screen with your authentication app.
- Once your app has scanned the code, it will generate a six-digit code. Enter this code into the “Enter security code” field on the Twitter screen and click “Verify.”
- Twitter will confirm that two-factor authentication is now set up on your account.
- You may be prompted to enter a backup code in case you lose access to your authentication app. Make sure to keep this code in a safe place.
Congratulations! You have now successfully added an authentication app to your Twitter account. Our team had many emails about this issue, and we chose to post the answer.