Twitter Users Warn Others Using Two-Factor Authentication Not To Sign Out As 2FA Texts Aren't Arriving

Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter has proven controversial, confusing, amusing, and sometimes even frustrating. This week appears to be falling in the frustrating category, as some users are warning others that they've encountered a bug that is locking them out of their accounts. The claims have surfaced amid concerns about Twitter's drastically reduced workforce and the ways Musk went about laying off around half of the company's employees — something said to not only have been a confusing mess, but also one that left the company having to ask some people to come back.

Amid the various rumors, leaks, and executive exits, some insiders have surfaced at multiple outlets expressing concerns about Twitter's infrastructure — including an alleged plan to significantly trim it — and whether the platform will be able to operate smoothly now that so much talent has left the building. Not helping matters are random tweets from new owner Elon Musk, who recently got into a public spat with an employee over the company's Android app that led to Musk publicly firing that individual. On the same day, November 14, Musk said in a different tweet that he was having Twitter turn off "'microservices' bloatware," leading to a conspiracy theory among users that the change led to issues with two-factor authentication.

According to some Twitter users, logging out of accounts that have two-factor authentication enabled has resulted in being unable to log back in. The reason? They say the text message with the verification code isn't sent to their device, and at least one screenshot shows an error message on the Twitter login screen telling the users to try again later. SlashGear tested the text-based two-factor authentication code with a Twitter account soon after the reports surfaced and didn't experience any issues. At the time of writing, neither Musk nor Twitter has commented on the rumors.

lmao pic.twitter.com/j79sQGYJhH

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) November 14, 2022

The number of reports seems to be high enough that users who have two-factor authentication turned on should consider turning it off (though that comes with some risks) or changing how they receive the verification code before logging out. Rather than getting the code through a text message, there's the option of setting up Twitter's account 2FA with an authenticator app, which generates codes that only last for several seconds before they're recycled. Instead of getting a text code, users can simply open the authentication app and enter the code featured next to their Twitter account. If you're really concerned about security, Twitter says you can use a security key instead of texts and authenticator apps.