If you run a Twitter account with a big amount of followers, you may have noticed a significant drop in your follower count over the last few weeks.
That’s because Twitter has removed millions of accounts linked to a potential vulnerability in its SMS service, which has also lead to Twitter switching off its tweets by SMS option permanently in most regions.
We want to continue to help keep your account safe. We’ve seen vulnerabilities with SMS, so we’ve turned off our Twitter via SMS service, except for a few countries.
Everyone will still have access to important SMS messages needed to log in to and manage their accounts.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) April 27, 2020
Tweeting via SMS is not a quite used option these days, however, it is still beneficial for those in developing regions, where access to data and networks is not as readily available, which is why Twitter will maintain support for the process in a few, specific markets.
In a statement provided to Mashable, Twitter said:
“We are removing accounts that were created via SMS as we no longer support this technology and because these accounts have a high risk of becoming compromised. As a result of this, some accounts may see a drop in followers. We want people to have confidence that their follower counts are meaningful, accurate and reflect active accounts on Twitter, and this is part of our ongoing work to ensure that.”
Big Twitter accounts might see a drop of 8% to 10 % in their total audience after this purge. Thus, in case you see a drop is most probably due to this and not because of something you tweeted or did. If you have a small Twitter account, the drop might be insignificant.