Earlier this week, X (formerly Twitter) announced that audio and video calls are now available to everyone on the service. By default, this means anyone you follow can make an audio or video call to you.
X has automatically turned this on for everyone, there’s no opt-in. Suddenly, the mere act of following a person or brand gives them the right to phone you.
Some users may welcome this new feature, but many will be concerned about the potential for interruptions and unwanted calls. It’s not as if X has a sparkling record with dealing the bot accounts that Elon Musk once promised to eradicate.
If you want to ensure you’re not bothered by junk calls, here are the settings you need to change now.
How To Block Calls On Twitter
To access the relevant settings, you’ll need to open the Twitter app on your smartphone. Now you should:
- Tap the envelope icon used to access your direct messages
- Click the settings cog at the top of the screen
You’ll now be presented with a series of options. You can simply block all video and audio calls outright by unchecking the box that says “enable audio and video calling.”
Beneath that are more nuanced options, which let you choose who can call you. The four options are:
- People in your address book (this requires you to give X permission to access your phone’s contacts, if you haven’t already done so)
- People you follow (the default option which is already selected)
- Verified users (remember that these people aren’t verified in the conventional sense of the word, these are just paying account holders)
- Everyone
If you choose to leave audio and video calls on with one of those four options, it’s still worth checking the “Enhanced call privacy” option that sits below those four options. This, according to X, will stop your IP address being revealed to callers.
This could be particularly critical for whistleblowers or undercover journalists or anyone who doesn’t want to reveal their whereabouts, as IP addresses can be used to trace a person’s rough location.
How Twitter Calls Work
If you follow the link about the enhanced call privacy setting in the X app, it reveals more details about how the calls work.
Specifically, “if both parties to a call have this [enhanced call privacy] setting disabled (which it is by default), once our servers facilitate the initial setup, the call itself is routed peer-to-peer such that each parties [sic] IP address may be visible to the other.”
“However, if either party has this setting enabled, a call between the two will be relayed through X infrastructure, and the IP address of any party that has this setting enabled will be masked.”
X makes no mention on its support page for audio and video calls about whether the calls are encrypted. The company no longer has staff responsible for answering media inquiries.
Audio and video calls are only available in the X app for Android and iPhone.
