Twitter is Testing a Phone Number Verification Badge

Twitter has confirmed that it is testing a new profile badge for people who have verified their phone numbers. The company noted that this experiment is to ‘allow people to add context to their accounts.’ App researcher Jane Manchun Wong pointed out the feature last week, noticing the Twitter label that would appear on accounts with a verified phone number.

To help Twitter with the account verification process, verified ‘blue check’ accounts must have either a phone number or email address linked. The new “verified phone number” feature will display a grey label on the bottom half of a person’s Twitter bio. The company said this is one of the ways that will help users find credible info and gives more information about different types of accounts. It also added that verification is only a part of the process and it’s currently only testing the phone number verification with an opt-in option.

Interestingly, the feature comes amid Elon Musk’s Twitter buyout deal and the subsequent attempt to terminate the multi-billion-dollar acquisition. The deal between the Tesla CEO and Twitter has been on hold with the richest man in the world being vocal about bot fears — claiming that the major chunk of accounts on Twitter are fake or spam accounts and alleging that this had violated their deal contract. The verified phone number badge may be a way for Twitter to combat this, though it might bring up a whole lot of other issues, especially concerning privacy.

Earlier this month, Twitter fixed a data breach that exposed information of 5.4 million accounts. The company said in a blog post that the vulnerability allowed users to discover accounts with a phone number or email address of a user exposing the identities of pseudonymous accounts. The breach resulted from an update to its code in June 2021, which Twitter realized in July 2022.