Twitter Wants Users To Pay For 2FA

Uploaded on 2023-02-22 in TECHNOLOGY-Key Areas-Social Media, FREE TO VIEW

Elon Musk's takeover and management of Twitter has already provoked criticism and certainly ruffled feathers across the technology industry. Big Tech firms like Google, Microsoft and Meta are leading participants in the social media business and the shakeup at Twitter is certain to be followed closely by both executives and users of other platforms.

Not least among these is Facebook, who have attracted major regulatory penalties over their approach to user privacy and the widespread abuse of their platform for malicious purposes.

Now, the stakes have risen as Musk moves Twitter towards becoming a paid platform with the recent introduction of the Twitter Blue subscription service in some markets and the introduction of account verification using the Blue Tick in return for an annual fee.

The latest development is to charge Twitter users for security features that have previously been free, with the recent announcement by Twitter regarding its two-factor authentication method. This move means that non-Twitter Blue users will have to find an alternative way of securing their accounts within 30 days of receiving notice.

The decision to disable SMS-based two factor authentication for users who do not subscribe to the paid subscription service Twitter Blue gives users 30 days to disable the feature and switch to another factor of authentication. If users do not perform these actions before the 30-day cut off, the SMS-based authentication will be disabled without a substitute in place, and only have a password for authentication until another factor, such as using an authenticator app or security key, is set up.

That's a big enough short term change, but the larger issue is that the majority of Twitter users are not currently securing their accounts with any form of MFA.

According to a report released by Twitter in July 2022, only 2.6% of accounts had two factor authentication enabled as of December 2021, and 74.4% of those accounts are using SMS as an authentication factor. Ciarán Walsh, Associate Research Engineer at Tenable commented, "SMS-based two factor authentication is a weak authentication method as it can be easily exploited using techniques such as sim swapping. The use of an authenticator app or security key is considered stronger as they are not vulnerable to such attacks. Although SMS authentication is considered weak, it is still more secure than using just a password."

Whether introduction of this measure is a short-term fix, as Musk tries different things to see what works at improving the economic performance Twitter, remains to be seen. The progress in his efforts to transform social media into a paid-for service signals a substantial change for the entire social media industry.

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