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Comment by nomilk | Hacker News Reader

> If you operate a pseudonymous Twitter account, we understand the risks an incident like this can introduce and deeply regret that this happened. To keep your identity as veiled as possible, we recommend not adding a publicly known phone number or email address to your Twitter account.

First time I've heard a company actually say this. It's obvious to people who understand a bit about tech and security, but not obvious to the layperson. Twitter actually deserve a tiny amount of credit for giving practical advice that reduces adversity for users in the event of a breach.

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No, that's just shifting the blame onto the user. If they are asking for something as sensitive as a mobile number, then they need to protect it properly.

They ask for a mobile number to verify you're a real human, then they say "Ha it's your fault you gave us a sensitive mobile number". 99.9% of users only have one mobile, and have no idea how to get an alternate number, so they just give the number they have.

> that's just shifting the blame onto the user.

Even so, it's the first time I've seen a company actually imply to the public in plain English that they can't protect private info, rather than maintain a facade of security that doesn't actually exist.

As you point out though, if Twitter requires a phone number to sign up and 99.9% of users use their personal number, then Twitter are basically saying "our security sucks and if you want an account you have no alternative...".

Some interesting corollaries:

- Are there any services that will sign up to twitter on behalf of users? (and would they work or would it be merely shifting trust from Twitter to a potentially less trustworthy party?)

- I wonder if Twitter could consider not requiring personal info at sign up so as to avoid this dark UX

- Is there a 10 minute mail for phone numbers?

No. That’s not practical advice. Twitter is gaslighting us. You can’t use Twitter without a phone number. They require it.

Combine the advice with the fact that a phone number is required and you get the practical advice: don’t use twitter.

I signed up for twitter a couple weeks ago to follow some ukraine folks. They didn't require a phone number and just double checking my account doesn't have one.

They require it most of the time, and not always at first. Do anything remotely controversial, like retweeting a non-conformist, and they likely will.

I spent years being extremely controversial on twitter. Account is still active and does not have a phone number linked.

So you have a well-established account from years ago that doesn't have a phone number. Congrats. Now try to get a new account to protect your identity.

Except for a long time they shut down accounts without a phone number under the pretense of "suspicious activity". For some reason, these suspicions could be immediately allayed only by providing your phone number.

Being forced to do something and later being advised not to do that thing out of deep concern for my well-being? Yeah, that's the Twitter UX vibe: the most self-regarding, passive-aggressive person you know, in software form.

Twitter often FORCED users to enter a valid phone number by locking accounts, and then verified if it was active in comparison to accounts. To this day there is no way to remove the phone number or disassociate it with an account. Please do not oversimplify the offense, it does not do justice to the cited issues involved.

Two days ago, I've tried to create an account tied only to an email. During account creation, the wizard suddenly inserted an additional step and required my to enter a phone number.

I realise though that this is possibly an anti-spam measure (which I'm in favour of), since I've connected through Tor when creating the account. But this procedure stands in stark contrast to the advise given in the article.

If they actually cared they would make that statement in bold at the time they ask for your phone number and email address.

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