On their support page, one of Twitter's top recommendations if your account has been hacked or compromised is to enable a Second-Factor Authentication. Twitter also provide a full list of do’s and don'ts to educate their customers, therefore making them feel safer against potential hackers on their platform. Twitter offers a 2FA support allowing users to secure their accounts against take over attacks.
Right! Let's secure your account.
1. Locating the 2FA settings in Twitter
1.1 - To begin the process of securing your Twitter account, log into your account and go to the left hand side of the page. Then click the button with the 3 dots in the circle.
1.2 - This will then bring up an extra menu. Navigate to Settings and Privacy and click on this menu item.
1.3 - You will now be in the settings page, which contains multiple categories. Navigate to security and account access. There will then be two different sections: Security and App and sessions. Click Security. You will then be presented with the 2 Factor Authentication page (also known as 2FA).
2. Enabling Twitter's 2FA
2.1 - Let's begin securing your account! Click the box that says Two-Factor Authentication.
2.2 - You now have various options to secure your account: Text Message, Authentication App or Security Key. For this guide, we will be using the Authentication App option, and will secure your Twitter account with Authenly.
2.3 - Once you have selected the Authentication app and clicked it, a QR code will then be displayed. This is used to pass a secret code from Twitter to the Authenticator app, in order to secure your Twitter account. For a little background information, the Text Message method is actually not as secure as an Authenticator App. This is why Authenly is solely using the Authentication method to keep your account safe from hackers and unwanted access.
The code is now ready to scan, head to the Authenly app!.
2.4 - In the Authenly App, tap the QR scan icon on the home screen, or access it via the menu.
As you scan the Twitter QR code, this operation will install the 2FA on your mobile device, so that you can now use it each time to secure your Twitter account with Authenly.
2.5 - As Twitter requests your code to validate the 2FA setup, tap the Twitter 2FA line to view the Twitter code in the Authenly app, and enter it in the entry box provided by Twitter where it asks to verify your code.
3. Your Twitter is secured
3.1 - Done! Your Twitter account is now validated and secured with Authenly. You are safe from malicious attacks by reuse of your username and password, and a potential loss of your Twitter account, or any sensitive information that may be stored on your Twitter account.
As you have experienced, installing a 2FA protection for a specific vendor account on your mobile device is quite a simple task to perform. We have built a list of 2FA installation guides for most major web applications, so that you can add safely and quickly an additional layer of security to your online account, and thereby also to your online identity.
4. Backup
Bear in mind that it is very important to keep a safe backup of your 2FA. Authenly is using a unique un-hackable offline secret to backup your 2FA-TOTP. This is a lot more secure than writing your 8 or 12 backup passcodes on paper or in a file accessible on your computer and/or on the cloud. It is also a lot more secure than letting your 2FA authentication app provider do the backup for you in their cloud (when they get hacked - not if... - your 2FA protection is rendered totally useless). Therefore, just make sure that you backup your 2FA-TOTP with Authenly as an offline secret, and be safe that you will not suffer any account lock-out and that you can restore at any time this 2FA onto any mobile device with your Authenly identity.
