X (formerly known as Twitter) has been in the news ever since it was taken over by Elon Musk. From the drastic name change to some aggressive staff cuts over the past years, the popular social media website has always been in the news because of the owner’s actions and decisions. Who would have thought that X will eventually charge you just to be verified? It’s a rollercoaster ride for avid users of the platform.
There’s also a brand new feature on X that pushes the capability of the social media platform: the ability to make video and audio calls. The feature is automatically activated for everyone right and it’s actually a welcome feature for those who want to have options in voice or video calls. Facebook already has this feature for many, many years so X could also provide this option is always good news.
A Good Feature But Bad for Privacy
While the ability to call people on X is a welcome addition, it does create some form of problem when it comes to privacy. According to Gizmodo, a privacy researcher revealed the users IP address on X is revealed while on audio or video call. This creates a big security concern because an IP address can be used in many ways including tracing the users location and even gaining access to a local computer for attacks.
Protecting their users IP address from potential attacks should be the standard but it’s a feature that has only been implemented by some online video and audio calling services. For example, Whatsapp has only recently implemented an IP address protection option for their users during audio and video calls by routing them through another server which effectively hides the real information.
Hiding this very important information for user protection is a must but it could offer some problems in connectivity. Because it has to go through another server, it could sacrifice the quality of the call. This is the reason why it is given as an option not as a default so that users can disable IP address protection if there’s a problem with the line.
Switched On by Default
The problem with X is that audio and video calls were switched on by default after the feature was rolled out. This creates a security problem when you are called by someone over the social media platform. To avoid this security problem, it is highly recommended to switch off this type of feature for now. Switching off this feature is actually very easy because you just need to go to Settings and Support > Settings and Privacy > Direct Messages and look for the “Enable audio and video calling” feature.
You may have also noticed that the audio and video calls could be customized based on your preference. If you’re feeling brave, you could even activate this feature so that EVERYONE on X could call you. You could also limit the calls to the people you follow or in your address book. For now, it’s best to switch off this feature altogether to avoid any security problems.