Twitter tests special tag to highlight phone number-verified accounts
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After demands for Twitter to identify verified accounts, the company introduces a new tag label that addresses the matter.
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Twitter tests special tags to highlight phone number-verified accounts.
Aside from Elon Musk's bot-baiting, many people have called for adjustments to how Twitter identifies accounts and what can be done to identify which ones are more legitimate than others. Engineer Jane Manchun Wong has created a Twitter label that would identify accounts that have a verified phone number.
She also mentioned another test feature that displays tweet view counts, which some users already have access to for their own tweets under the name "analytics". However, she stated that it is unclear if this would be confined to the author or visible to everybody.
Linking an account to a number is one method to emphasize that it was made with more care than the simplest macro, and it might be used to filter out which tweets appear prominently or pass through the various layers of quality filters.
Read next: Musk: Twitter deal should go ahead if it provides real accounts proof
Twitter also allows users to associate the same phone number with up to ten distinct accounts, and developers can flag automated accounts to let users know that each post isn't made by a human.
Verified "blue check" accounts must already have a verified phone number or email address. When then-CEO Jack Dorsey discussed ambitions to make verification available to everyone, he referenced having individuals verify facts about themselves, which might have been similar to how businesses like Airbnb and Tinder use phone numbers as part of their account verification processes.
#ElonMusk has threatened to walk away from his $44 billion buyout deal for #Twitter Inc if the social media company fails to provide data on spam and fake accounts. pic.twitter.com/NVq1aSGNhi
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) June 7, 2022
However, encouraging users to link phone numbers to their accounts and display the status raises the issue of data security. Twitter published the details of an incident on August 5 that allowed an attacker to identify 5.4 million user names associated with certain phone numbers and email addresses.
The privacy weakness was introduced in a June 2021 update, according to the firm, and wasn't disclosed to Twitter until January, and Twitter didn't realize the information had been stolen until July when media rumors spread that someone was attempting to sell the database.
Read next: Elon Musk to pull out of $44bn deal to buy Twitter
The 2020 hack, which allowed attackers to tweet about Bitcoin from Jack Dorsey and Joe Biden's accounts, occurred when the attackers social-engineered their way into utilizing Twitter's internal tools.
According to another Bloomberg report, some contractors used Twitter's tools to spy on celebrity accounts, and earlier this month, a former employee was convicted on spying charges after he used his position to "access the email addresses, phone numbers, and birth dates of users who were critical of the Saudi government."
$150 million settlement
Twitter agreed to a $150 million settlement in May for inappropriately using phone numbers and email addresses acquired for two-factor authentication in its ad targeting, demonstrating how vulnerable data may be.
With the midterm elections approaching, there is increased pressure to ensure that information shared on social media is from real persons or at least someone who lives in the country they represent. The phone number tag could play a role in determining an account's reliability, but it's unclear if or when Twitter would make it widely available.
Twitter is working on showing Tweet view count
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) August 19, 2022
It’s unsure whether it will be visible to the author only or everyone pic.twitter.com/G6N0SIjLbX
