() — Twitter Blue subscribers will be the only users of the platform that will be able to use text messages as a method of two-factor authentication, announced Twitter this Friday.
The change will take place on March 20. Twitter users will have two other ways to authenticate their Twitter logins at no cost: a mobile authenticator app and a security key.
Two-factor authentication, or 2FA, requires users to type in their password and then enter a code or security key to access their accounts. It is one of the main methods for users to keep their Twitter account secure.
“While it has historically been a popular form of 2FA, unfortunately we’ve seen phone number-based 2FA used – and abused – by people with bad intentions,” the company said in a blog post on Friday. “So starting today, we will no longer allow accounts to sign up for the text/SMS method of 2FA unless they are Twitter Blue subscribers.”
Twitter Blue, which costs $11 a month for iOS and Android subscribers, adds a blue checkmark to the account of anyone willing to pay for one.
As of 2021, only 2.6% of Twitter users had a 2FA method enabled, and of those, 74.4% used SMS authentication, according to a report Twitter account security.
Twitter said non-subscribers will have 30 days to turn off the text method and sign up for another way to log in using 2FA. Turning off 2FA via text will not automatically unlink the user’s phone number from their account, Twitter said.
Musk replied “Yeah” to a tweet in which affirmed that a telecommunications company was using bot accounts “to pump SMS 2FA” and that Twitter was losing $60 million a year “on fraudulent SMS.”
