Twitter tightens account security for political candidates ahead of US election

Twitter is taking steps to tighten account security for a range of users ahead of the US presidential election, including by requiring the use of strong passwords.

“We’re taking the additional step of proactively implementing account security measures for a designated group of high-profile, election-related Twitter accounts in the US. Starting today, these accounts will be informed via an in-app notification from Twitter of some of the initial account security measures we will be requiring or strongly recommending going forward,” it said in a blog post announcing the pre-emptive step.

Image credit: Twitter

Last month Twitter said it would be dialling up efforts to combat misinformation and election interference, as well as pledging to help get out the vote — going on to out an election hub to help voters navigate the 2020 poll earlier this week.

Its latest election-focused security move follows an embarrassing account hack incident in July which saw scores of verified users’ accounts accessed and used to tweet out a cryptocurrency scam.

Clearly, Twitter won’t want a politically-flavored repeat of that.

Twitter said accounts that will be required to take steps to tighten their security are:

• US Executive Branch and Congress

• US Governors and Secretaries of State

• Presidential campaigns, political parties and candidates with Twitter Election Labels running for US House, US Senate, or Governor

• Major US news outlets and political journalists

As well as requiring users in these categories to have a strong password — prompting those without one to update it next time they log in — Twitter said it will also enable Password reset protection for the accounts by default.

“This is a setting that helps prevent unauthorized password changes by requiring an account to confirm its email address or phone number to initiate a password reset,” it noted.

It will also encourage the target types of users to enable Two-factor authentication (2FA) as a further measure to bolster against unauthorized logins. Although it will not be requiring 2FA be switched on.

The platform also said it would be implementing extra layers of what it called “proactive internal security safeguards” for the aforementioned accounts, including:

• More sophisticated detections and alerts to help us, and account holders, respond rapidly to suspicious activity

• Increased login defenses to prevent malicious account takeover attempts

• Expedited account recovery support to ensure account security issues are resolved quickly

Also today, Twitter released more detail about how its platform manipulation and spam policies apply to groups seeking to coordinate to cause harm, giving the example of the conspiracy group QAnon. It began a crack down on the conspiracy group in July, when it banned thousands of accounts that had been spreading baseless BS which Twitter said had “the potential to lead to offline harm”.