This is how you protect your Twitter account in two steps

Protect Twitter account in 2 steps

It’s bound to happen: your Twitter account is hacked and malicious people use it to spread all kinds of political slogans or scams. To prevent this from happening to you, it is wise to properly protect your Twitter account. You can do this in just two steps: with two-step verification!

• Step 1: Two-step verification
• Step 2: Block external apps
• Prevent a hack

Despite all these precautions, it is still possible for someone to gain control of your account. This became apparent during the major Twitter hack of July 2020, in which someone gained access to Twitter’s internal systems and therefore gained admin rights. That is a very exceptional situation that (if all goes well) will not happen very often, but it is still good to know what you can do to minimize the chance.

Step 1: Set up Twitter two-step verification

Twitter offers you the option to set up two-step verification for your account. You will then only log in if you enter a special code. You will receive this on your iPhone. It is easy to activate via Twitter’s iOS app via the account settings, but it can also be done in a similar way via the website.

1. Open the Twitter app and tap your profile photo at the top left.
2. Tap Settings & Support > Settings & Privacy.
3. Choose Security & account access > Security.
4. Choose Two-step verification and indicate which method you want to use: SMS, a verification app or a physical key. We do not recommend choosing SMS. You can read why that is further down.

Set up authenticator app for Twitter

After March 20, 2023, SMS verification requires you to be a paid Twitter Blue user. For most people, verification via an app is smarter, but there are even more reasons NOT to choose SMS. This method is less secure because text messages can be intercepted. Twitter itself also mentions it in a blog posting: the SMS-based system is regularly abused by malicious parties.

Therefore, it is better to choose to use an authenticator app such as Google Authenticator. You do this as follows:

1. Download a suitable app, such as Google Authenticator.
2. In the Twitter app, click your profile photo and click Settings & Support > Settings & Privacy > Security & Account Access. On the desktop use this link.
3. Click Security > Two-Step Verification.
4. Choose Authentication App.
5. You will now get a pop-up. Twitter generates a QR code that you can scan with the chosen verification app.
6. Your account will now be linked and you can now retrieve the two-factor codes in the chosen app. This code changes every 30 seconds.

If you are still using SMS for Twitter verification, you can also use the steps above to ensure that you switch to this more secure method. In any case, make sure that you have chosen a different verification method after March 20, 2023.

Take the time to do it, because then you will enjoy it for a long time. Maybe you are not a well-known person and you are not at much risk of targeted attacks on your account, but you also do not want malicious people to shout bad things on your behalf. Also choose a strong password that you save in a password manager so that the chance of a hacked account is even smaller.

For example, you can use 1Password or LastPass to store all your passwords. You do need a strong master password for this. You can read how to choose it in our tip.

Step 2: Block external Twitter apps

You may have once allowed Instagram, Blendle, NOS, Jumbo, Gowalla or another app to manage your Twitter account. With some services you sometimes don’t even know what it is about anymore. What was Jumbo again? And Gowalla? Wasn’t that an alternative to Foursquare, with which you could check in at locations? Beats! And the app has not been active for years. There is no point in continuing to grant all those outdated apps and services access to your account. You might be shocked at how many services you’ve given both read and write permissions.

To withdraw consent:

1. On the computer, go to Twitter.com and log in with your account.
2. Click the More button on the left (above the blue Tweet button) and choose Settings & Support, followed by Settings & Privacy.
3. Now select the Security & Account Access menu and choose Apps & Sessions from the right column.
4. The last menus you open are Apps and Sessions, followed by Connected Apps. Then click on all unnecessary apps and select Revoke access for each app.

Prevent hacking of your Twitter account

With the above two steps you reduce the chance that your Twitter account will be hacked. Such hacks are sometimes in the news, but the cause is often very simple: for example, the owner has chosen an easy-to-guess password. A strong password goes a long way, but with the two measures we mentioned above you reduce the chance to virtually zero.

Both measures are super simple to implement and take less than five minutes. We have a separate tip explaining how to find out if someone else has been to your Twitter account. That could also be a curious roommate who wanted to read your DMs.