Due To Security Issues, Twitter Starts Killing Its SMS-Based Tweeting Feature

Let's not forget that Twitter was born before smartphones and the internet have become necessities.

To appeal people at the time, Twitter needed to have a way for users to tweet without connecting to the internet. And that was by introducing an SMS-based tweeting. And also let's not forget that the original 140-character limit on Twitter was to also meant to meet SMS character limitation.

Fast forward to the time when the internet has become a norm and smartphones in almost everyone's hands, not that many Twitter users are still relying on text messages to tweet.

Then in 2019, CEO and founder Jack Dorsey had his Twitter account hacked. This happened because the hackers managed to use Twitter via SMS through SIM-swapping method.

Later, the company disabled the compose feature for this service in select regions.

In February, Twitter discovered and fixed an issue that was actively exploited by hackers to match specific phone numbers to their corresponding Twitter accounts using a large network of fake accounts.

Twitter also revealed that some users' phone numbers and email addresses provided for account security like two-factor authentication (2FA) may have been used accidentally for ad targeting.

"No personal data was ever shared externally with our partners or any other third parties," Twitter said at that time. "As of September 17, we have addressed the issue that allowed this to occur and are no longer using phone numbers or email addresses collected for safety or security purposes for advertising."

And in 2020, simply because there are just too many vulnerabilities in the SMS model, the company decided to shut down the service:

The social network however didn’t specify the countries where Twitter via SMS will remain active for this time.

Users who were using Twitter over SMS are advised to transition to the social network's web platform or to the Twitter mobile app "to enjoy the full Twitter experience."

For the time being, Twitter decided not to kill SMS-based 2FA and password verification.

Tweeting via SMS may not be a must-have feature for most Twitter users. However, the service can certainly be useful when there’s an internet shutdown, and users want to receive updates from official accounts. Twitter that is most famous for help shaping politics, tweet via SMS can be a feature to be missed by some people.

The company acknowledges this, at least to some extent.

This is why Twitter added that users can still use "important SMS messages" to log in onto the platform and to manage their accounts, in cases like when there is no internet connectivity, and people need to rely on traditional means of information.