X (aka Twitter) has enabled video calls – here’s how to switch them off
It's your call.
You pick up your phone and see you have an incoming call from X.
Sorry, what?
Yes, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your opinion, the app formerly known as Twitter can now be used to make phone and video calls – so you could end up being contacted by people you’ve never given your phone number to.
The feature was made first available to premium members, but it is now slowly rolling out to the rest of the platform users, and switched on by default.
Video and audio calls are made through direct messages where a phone icon is present – so anyone can make a video or audio call to your account – but through the app only, not desktop.
If you miss a call, you’ll get a notification stating who was calling and, well, that they called.
But if you’d rather not get them at all, they can be switched off.
How to switch off X calling
- Go to Settings
- Go to into Privacy and Security
- Tap on Direct messages
- Here you have a number of options. You can either choose just to receive calls from just people in your address book, people you follow, verified users or everyone
- Alternatively, you can switch off the function entirely by toggling off ‘Enable audio and video calling’
So far, the reception for X calling has been lukewarm, to say the least.
‘Cool! Disabled it already! Thanks for the warning!’ one X user, James, said.
Another, Peter, said: ‘Buckle up, bot calls incoming!!!’
A third, Sarah Go Green said: ‘X has just added a feature to enable audio and video calling.
‘I have just turned mine off as I don’t really want anyone randomly calling my phone or video calling even if I know them on X. I’ve read when the calls name it also discloses your IP address.’
Sarah Go Green is right.
The calls are peer-to-peer, meaning the two people in the call share each other’s IP addresses as the call connects to their devices directly.
X’s official help centre says that calls are routed in a way where the user’s IP addresses ‘may be visible to the other’.
To hide your IP address, you can toggle on ‘Enhanced call privacy’ in your message settings. This means your calls ‘will be relayed through X infrastructure, and the IP address of any party that has this setting enabled will be masked’.
The official help centre does not mention encryption, meaning the calls may not be end-to-end encrypted.