I’ve just faced this problem yesterday. For app developers out there who are using the Twitter API for their apps or normal webmasters who need the API for their plugins and scripts, you will find that Twitter requires the account to have an associated mobile number before it allows access levels higher than “Readâ€. For those living in countries that are supported, great for you. For others, activating your mobile number can be a really difficult or even an impossible task. You will most likely face either one of these problems when trying to add a mobile number:
- Your carrier isn’t listed
- Your carrier is “listed†but it doesn’t work giving error “Sorry, we don’t have a connection to your carrier yet!â€
- You waste money to send a message using the long code method but it doesn’t work.
- You submit a form for review but after waiting and waiting there isn’t any reply.
What now? You cannot add a mobile phone number, you cannot get the right permissions for your app, what on earth is Twitter thinking? This new rule just kicked in earlier this year: https://dev.twitter.com/notifications/new-apps-registration I’m not exactly sure how it works for older accounts as apparently my older account doesn’t require a mobile number for it to have higher app permissions. It’s only when I tried with an account I registered just yesterday that I’m faced with such rules.
Don’t worry as it isn’t just you that is facing such a problem. There are many people out there that are suffering and constantly googling for a solution (like me before I chanced upon this workaround). Hopefully you are one of them and the workaround I will be proposing works for you.
Apparently, there is a way to work around the wonky mobile phone verifications and activation stuff. Simply go to your browser and navigate to http://mobile.twitter.com/settings. Scroll till you see the option under “Phone†and press “Addâ€. Simply type in your phone number and voila! You have “successfully†added a phone number! Head back to your app and try adjusting the permissions once more. It should allow you to give permissions higher than “Read†only access.
Hopefully this works and helps you solve your problem. This new rule implemented by Twitter sure is absurd for a multitude of reasons; for instance, not everyone has a mobile number. To make matters worse, the adding of mobile number isn’t even working properly. By using this workaround, you will see some weird behaviour (only in the mobile number settings) by twitter but ultimately it works.
NOTE: After further testing, you apparently just have to add the number once and you can simply remove it after. The account seems to be “verified†or “linked†to a mobile number. I didn’t even confirm or verify the number and yes, Twitter did send me a message (weird huh, I thought my carrier wasn’t supported?) to my phone to ask for verifications and yes, I ignored it and it still worked. Maybe someone from Twitter will come out and clarify point of adding a mobile number in the aspects of app permissions and development.
