Twitter said it disabled option of using SMS with the text of new tweets last week due to security issues.
The function was disabled in all countries, except for “several” (which is not specified), where it is especially actively used.
“We’ve seen vulnerabilities with SMS, so we’ve turned off our Twitter via SMS service, except for a few countries. Everyone will still have access to important SMS messages needed to log in to and manage their accounts”, — wrote Twitter representatives.
It is unlikely that this innovation will become a problem for the vast majority of users, since they work with the service through applications or a site.
However, there are still individual complaints from people and companies that still used this functionality.
For example, a company, DansDeals, said it used this feature to alert readers about sales.
“For more than 11 years, thousands of DansDeals readers have been getting SMS alerts of new deals via the service. In fact the @DansDeals Twitter follower count fell from about 97,000 to below 89,000 as Twitter apparently removed the followers who signed up for DansDeals SMS alerts via their fast-follow SMS service that didn’t require a full Twitter account. There are other options to get alerts, but those options require a smartphone. Twitter appears to be writing off non-smartphone users and users that just don’t want another app on their phones”, — wrote DansDeals representatives.
At the same time, disabling the reading of tweets via SMS messages, in fact, marks the end of an era: at the start of the service Twitter was built around SMS messages. So, the limit of 140 characters arose precisely because of this, because initially tweets were adapted for text messages, so that you could write and receive new tweets via SMS.
Later, more and more people began to buy smartphones and switch to using applications.
Let me remind you that the ability to create tweets via SMS was disabled in September 2019 due to security problems. This decision was made after the hacking group Chuckle Gang hijacked the phone number of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and then used the tweet via SMS feature to post offensive and racist content on behalf of Dorsey (crackers even claimed to be at headquarters bomb planted).
Now, by disabling and receiving tweets via SMS, the developers claim that this will help increase the security of user accounts. It’s not entirely clear what the possible risk of getting tweets in this way is, but Twitter has long been interested in phasing out this functionality. After all, if people get tweets via SMS, the company cannot show them ads.
By the way, I recently wrote that Sindhi Language Symbols, sent via Twitter, can disable iPhone and iPad.
