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Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

sucky.ninja

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Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

#141

Post by libraryatnight »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #91
munk-a wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is slightly different though, twitter is silly and unnecessary - access to your money is not. During some of the recent shows highlighting issues with payday lending these sorts of strategic delays were mentioned in the light that they can cause irregularly paid workers to have problems actually getting money out of their paycheck - forcing them into more borrowing until they are able to clear their checks. Agai…

> twitter is just sillines Would you say the same about your phone number? If not, why? If I run my business on Twitter (or YouTube, or Facebook) is it that different from a bank?

No, why would he? They're completely different. Twitter is nothing at all like a phone number.

Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

#142

Post by 43920 »

inopinatus wrote: post #80

We're going this way as well (requiring & verifying phone numbers, not locking accounts). We don't have a problem with bots, but users in the "not so tech savvy" segment tend to switch/discard/forget their email address. Rather than try to recover their account with us, this group will subsequently just create a new one, and then wonder & complain that their profiles/settings/content/histories aren't carried over. We…

> Turns out that phone numbers, whilst also subject to flux, have better long-term congruence to identity

I'm not sure this is actually true, at least in the long-term. Most people keep their phone number for a long time, but if they ever cancel their phone service, the number usually gets recycled and given to someone else (unlike an email, which almost never gets re-used). If you're storing any kind of sensitive data, and allowing people to access it as long as they can verify their phone number, it could end up being a pretty serious privacy risk. It could also stop people from signing up for your service - if I get a new phone number, and the previous owner of the number has already signed up, what am I supposed to do?

Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

#143

Post by banana_giraffe »

munk-a wrote: post #81
banana_giraffe wrote: post #43

The article states and asks: > I had a new IP > I had a newly installed operating system and browser. > What exactly about my behavior is unusual? It's not that this behavior is unusual (though, it is), it's that this behavior looks exactly like a bot. It's sad, but this is the state of the world now. If you're a big actor like Twitter, you end up blocking anything that looks like a bot, with an escape hatch a user c…

Right now that may be the case but, I'm curious if this might cause some small nation with an international code to succumb to the massive amounts of money spammers will start offering for large banks of phone numbers... Looking at you British India Ocean Territories...

I'm sure you're right. I honestly wouldn't be surprised to learn it's already started.

The escalating warfare will continue. I'm not sure where it'll go from here, but I'm sure it won't be fun for people that value privacy.

Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

#144

Post by brianpgordon »

dx87 wrote: post #71
daybreak wrote: post #22

I had this problem when creating a new Twitter account last month. Within minutes after setting up an account via iOS app, was locked out for "suspicious behavior". Didn't even tweet once. Residential IP. They wanted me to add a phone number. I went to the help section and wrote a pissed off message to customer support...if they wanted my phone # they should have asked for it instead of accusing me. Shortly after, my…

I had the same thing happen. During signup it asked for my phone number but said it was optional. A couple of minutes after I created my account, it was locked and they said it required a phone number to prove I wasn't a bot. I just closed out my account because I only planned to use it to follow some people anyway.

The exact same thing happened to me a few months ago.

Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

#145

Post by sneak »

You also can’t reuse the phone number across different accounts, so I am locked out of about ten of my usernames (locked for “suspicious activity” even though they have been idle for a year or more) unless I give Burner or someone else a ton of money. It sucks.

Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

#146

Post by ams6110 »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #140
est31 wrote: post #120

The other component is that once they have the phone number, they can do anything with it they want, unless you leave the network. E.g. facebook once did the same, they required phone numbers "for two factor authentication". They promised to not use the numbers for anything else. A few years later they started sending SMS spam to users about what their friends did on facebook, and now facebook users can enter the num…

> Your only choice as individual user is to leave the platform. That's not even enough anymore. You also have to make sure that every one of your contacts do not upload their address book to conveniently find friends like you who may or may not be on the network. And that they don't tag you in images, events, etc. You're an entry in the Facebook database, whether you have or have had an active profile or not.

This is why you should block ads and trackers even if you're not a Facebook user. I have blocked all their domains in my hosts file also.

Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

#147

Post by anigbrowl »

lima wrote: post #13
burtonator wrote: post #6

This is the new norm... expect all services to require phone numbers due to spam and propaganda.

Sad but true. At the hosting company I work for, we had to start requiring phone numbers for cloud servers due to a massive wave of abuse. It's one of the few roadblocks that helps at least somewhat. Previously, we didn't even require a full name. A few idiots always ruin it for everyone.

A few idiots always ruin it for everyone.

Bad attitude. They're not idiots, they're abusers. Ruining it for everyone else is a feature, not a bug, although if they have been using a platform successfully they may be sad about their scope for abuse being curtailed. Also, consider that punishing everyone because of the actions of a few is the overreaction of someone who isn't willing to understand the problem and just wants it to go away.

Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

#148

Post by echelon »

H1Supreme wrote: post #132
packet_nerd wrote: post #118

My wife and I cancelled our phone services a while back to save money since we rarely if ever have to call anyone and just use messaging to keep in touch with each other and friends. What are people like us supposed to do? I do have a Google voice number, but I noticed one or two places recently that won't accept that anymore.

> I do have a Google voice number, but I noticed one or two places recently that won't accept that anymore. Mind sharing where? I've use my Google Voice number exclusively for 6 or 7 years now. Can't say I've ever ran into such a thing.

Tinder won't accept Google Voice numbers. That kept me off their platform for years.

Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

#149

Post by hnzix »

inopinatus wrote: post #121
mbesto wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Turns out that phone numbers, whilst also subject to flux, have better long-term congruence to identity, and thereby help us to detect account duplication and manage it. What service do you offer? Because I would never give a company where I wasn't paying for the service my phone number. How do you guarantee you won't misuse it or have ample protections in case of a breach?

We're a two-sided network for sports competition management and work with athletes, clubs, associations, and governing bodies. Users pay real money for our services, we don't carry ads or even tracking pixels, and our privacy policy details exactly how, when and to whom PII is disclosed. The broader point is that collection of phone number isn't intrinsically a bad thing, it's rather the usage and trust level that ma…

>The broader point is that collection of phone number isn't intrinsically a bad thing

Phone numbers as usernames is intrinsically bad for user data security at the meta level. If a service requires a verified phone number to signup, it becomes a de-facto username.

Let's say a fetish dating site is partially breached, and the usernames are emails. Now your let's say your database is fullly breached, with the usernames as phone numbers and emails included. Guess what happens next with the intersection of those two datasets?

Re: Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

#150

Post by tomc1985 »

apo wrote: post #86

Linking pseudonyms from two different networks (in this case, Twitter and the phone system) together is a classic and serious privacy leak. It's far from clear exactly what information Twitter, in its longtime effort to combat spam, has already collected on its users. Throwing a phone number into the mix expands to range of activities that can be unambiguously tied to the same individual. Given that Twitter certainly…

Hasn't that battle been lost for a while now though? How many different services have linked phone numbers with email or some other handle? (Particularly for 2FA)
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