This article was published on September 18, 2020

Twitter will now prompt high-profile political accounts to ramp up security

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Twitter will now prompt high-profile political accounts to ramp up security

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Twitter will start nudging high-profile political accounts to ramp up their login security ahead of the 2020 US election.

In a blog post, the company announced a select group of Congress members, government officials, news outlets, and even individual journalists will soon start receiving notifications, prompting them to strengthen their password if necessary and activate two-factor authentication.

[Read more: These tech trends defined 2020 so far, according to 5 founders]

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“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,” the company said in a statement. “While we’re requiring some accounts do this given the unique sensitivities of the election period.”

Twitter iterates the security measures it’s pushing to high-profile security accounts are already available to anyone on the platform, so if you’re worried about being a target, you can also take advantage of these features.

In case the heightened security measures fall short, though, Twitter is also actively working on improving the account recovery process with new features to respond rapidly to suspicious activity and expedited recovery support to ensure issues are resolved in a timely manner.

The news comes two months after Twitter suffered the biggest hack in its history, with numerous high-profile individuals affected, including Tesla’s Elon Musk and 2020 US presidential candidate Joe Biden and former commander-in-chief Barack Obama.

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