Twitter disables tweeting via SMS temporarily after its CEO got hacked

You might have already heard regarding the account of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey getting hacked. Now, celebrity accounts getting hacked is not a new thing at all but we are talking about a Twitter account being hacked. Also, the account belonged to the Twitter CEO which many seemed to think would have the best of security protection against hacks. While the account got hacked, we have been told that the hack was possible via the ability to tweet via text message on Twitter. The way these feature works is that you send a message to the designated number given by Twitter. Once that message is sent, it will be converted into a tweet and then posted on the platform.

Now, one of the reasons why this hack happened was Jack’s number was a victim of SIM swapping. Therefore, hackers could gain access to Twitter CEO’s mobile number and tweet racist comments. Although the tweets that were sent from hacked access have been deleted, we know that the damage was done. The hacker wanted to spread racist messages on the platform from an account which has global reach and he managed to do so.

Following this hack, Twitter has now disabled the ability to send tweets on Twitter via a text message. This means that you won’t be able to tweet from a feature phone if you were doing so. Although this feature has been disabled temporarily, we think this feature might soon be history if the company does not see much use of it.

Here is the official statement from Twitter on the reason behind disabling the feature:

“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).”