Starting today, Twitter has rolled out the two factor authentication to twitter accounts. Similar to Google and Outlook two step authentication, Twitter accounts too will now need another verification code apart from your existing password (if the security feature is enabled). This verification code is based on Twitter via SMS and a verification code will be sent to your Phone as a SMS whenever you login to twitter account using your existing user name and password.

Enable Twitter two step authentication via SMS

  1. Visit account settings page.
  2. On the settings page, select the option “Require a verification code when I sign in.”
  3. After that click on the link to “add a phone” if you have not added a phone to your account and follow the prompts.
  4. After you enroll in login verification, you’ll be asked to enter a six-digit code that you will receive on your phone via SMS each time you sign in to twitter.com.

account-security-twitter

Not available to everyone

To start using this feature, you must have a verified phone number with your twitter account apart from a verified email address. The whole problem here is, You cannot add a phone number to your account and verify it unless your Carrier is supported by Twitter. So at the moment, this feature is not going to available to many users including me as my carrier is still to get officially supported by Twitter. Hence, I can not use the two factor authentication for my account.

It would have been a great feature if instead of SMS only, the verifications codes could be generated by any app similar to Google Authenticator. Also, it would have enabled every single user to use two step authentication using an app instead of waiting for the carrier arrangements which obviously going to take long long time as there are loads of carriers around the world and everyone may not be friendly to twitter.