Twitter Temporarily Disables The Ability To Tweet Via SMS

Recently, Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey had his Twitter account hacked. Apparently how the hackers managed to gain access to his account and send out some hateful tweets from it was through the “tweet to SMS” feature, which for those unfamiliar, allows users to send tweets via SMS instead of having to go to Twitter’s website or use the app.

It seems that following the hack, Twitter has since announced that they will be temporarily disabling the feature until they can better secure it. “We’re temporarily turning off the ability to Tweet via SMS, or text message, to protect people’s accounts. We’re taking this step because of vulnerabilities that need to be addressed by mobile carriers and our reliance on having a linked phone number for two-factor authentication (we’re working on improving this).”

When exactly it will be reinstated remains to be seen, but it seems that Twitter will be choosing to prioritize markets that rely on it first, when they do get around to it. According to Twitter, “We’ll reactivate this in markets that depend on SMS for reliable communication soon while we work on our longer-term strategy for this feature.”

We’ll be keeping our eyes peeled for when the feature will be making its return, but in the meantime, how many of you actually use it instead of the Twitter app? Would you miss it if Twitter were to remove it?

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: Hack, Security, Twitter