On Thursday, Twitter announced that it is implementing more security measures for certain election-related accounts in the United States. The decision came after a recent hackers attack that compromised the accounts of prominent political figures and celebrities.
Twitter said in a blog post that “accounts belonging to the US executive branch, Congress, presidential campaigns and political parties are among those which it would require to take security measures given the unique sensitivities of the election period.”
The accounts will be required to use a strong password, Twitter will enable by default a setting that helps prevent unauthorized password changes and the users will be strongly encouraged to enable two-factor authentication.
Lawmakers have expressed concerns over what would happen if a similar breach occurred a day before the US presidential election on November 3.
After the hack, the White House said it had been in constant contact with Twitter to ensure the security of President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, which was not jeopardized in the hack.
Twitter said that in the coming weeks it would put in place other internal security safeguards for the accounts, including better detections to help the company and account holders respond quickly to suspicious activity and increased login defenses to prevent malicious account takeover attempts.
