Caption: Twitter blue tick cost confirmed
(Picture:Getty)
An apparent issue with two-factor authentication on Twitter seems to be leaving some users locked out of their accounts.
Two-factor authentication (2FA) is a common security method that involves a secondary code sent either via text or to an app that confirms a user’s identity.
But, if it doesn’t work, a person can become stranded from their online account.
Such is seemingly the case with Twitter as problems are being reported with its SMS-based 2FA method. For the record, SMS is the most popular form of 2FA.
The problems started to arise around 14th of November, when Twitter’s new boss Elon Musk annnounced the site would start turning off ‘microservices’, which he called ‘bloatware’.
Unfortunately, somewhere in there was the essential component of SMS 2FA. So if you have it set as a security option, you’re no longer able to use it to change your password or log back in if you’re logged out – if you clear your browser cache, for instance.
It goes without saying that if you’ve got SMS 2FA set up for your Twitter account, you should disable it and swap over to either the email or authenticator app option. You could even opt for a physical security key to do the job for you if you want.
To change your Twitter 2FA, once inside the app go to:
Settings & Support >
Settings & Privacy >
Security & Account Access >
Security >
Two-factor authentication.
Twitter’s support account seems to suggest the 2FA issue is minor and is being looked at. But a quick search reveals that dozens of people are reporting the same thing.
Since taking over at Twitter, Elon Musk has slimmed Twitter’s workforce down from over 7,000 to around 2,700.
Many areas of the company are now working on a skeleton staff and, as such, technical hiccups are going unfixed. If you need to know how to download your entire Twitter archive in case the site totally breaks, we’ve outlined how to do so in this article.
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Reports are emerging that SMS 2FA for Twitter isn’t working at the moment.
