Twitter today announced a new security feature enabling HTTPS for all web connections to the service. HTTPS is a secure/encrypted version of the standard web protocol, HTTP. This follows similar recent changes by Facebook.
Using HTTPS where possible/available is important – it means that all your communications with the Twitter site are encrypted end-to-end from your browser to their servers. Using it eliminates many possibilities for the “bad guys” to snoop your personal information during any transaction between yourself and Twitter.
Turn it on. Now.
Go to your Twitter Settings Page and make sure “Always Use HTTPS” is ticked, and click “Save”.
This does not necessarily protect you when using third-party Twitter applications, but today’s changes should allow such applications to be updated with similar security functionality, if they don’t already use it. Twitter has had HTTPS available for quite some time if you wanted – they are now at least allowing people to enforce its use.
Do it people. Protect your personal information as much as you can.