Twitter Suspends Tweets Via SMS

(RTTNews) - Twitter Inc. temporarily turned off the facility to tweet via text messages, saying that the move is intended to protect people's accounts.

The company's decision comes just days after the feature was misused by a group to hack Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's account on the social network.

"We're taking this step because of vulnerabilities that need to be addressed by mobile carriers and our reliance on having a linked phone number for two-factor authentication (we're working on improving this)", Twitter said in one of a series of tweets Wednesday.

Twitter has plans to reactivate this option in markets that depend on text messages or SMS for reliable communication soon, while it works on a longer-term strategy for this feature.

Individuals not having a data plan or access to the Internet depend on text messages to send tweets.

Dorsey's Twitter account, which has more than 4.21 million followers, was hacked on Friday and several offensive tweets, including racial slurs and one defending Nazi Germany, were posted on the account. A group referring to itself as Chuckling Squad took the credit for the hacking.

The New York Times reported that Dorsey's account was compromised by a messaging service called CloudHopper that enables users to send tweets by just sending a text message.

CloudHopper, acquired by Twitter in 2010, allows users who link their phone number to their Twitter account to tweet by sending text messages.

Twitter later confirmed that the phone number associated with Dorsey's account was compromised due to a "security oversight" by his mobile provider.

A few other high-profile Twitter account hacks were reported recently, including that of YouTube stars James Charles and Shane Dawson. Hackers also appeared to have gained control of Hollywood actress Chloe Grace Moretz's Twitter account earlier on Wednesday.