Twitter Launches Encrypted Direct Messages Help With Many Limitations

Twitter on Thursday introduced the launch of its encrypted DMs function, which is geared toward securing messages on the platform. Whereas that is Twitter’s first transfer in its objective of supporting end-to-end encrypted messages on the service, the corporate has warned that the present implementation has a number of limitations. Solely verified customers can begin encrypted chats, whereas Twitter does not at the moment help encrypted group messages on the app. There’s additionally a restrict on the variety of gadgets that may have entry to encrypted conversations, in accordance with the corporate.

The corporate explained in a weblog put up that the brand new encryption function for direct messages, or DMs, is supported on the newest variations of Twitter for iOS, Android, and the Internet. Nevertheless, each customers will have to be verified, both as a Twitter Blue subscriber, or as a member of a verified organisation on Twitter. Even when these two standards are met, the recipient should observe the sender of the message or have already despatched them a message previously — they’ll additionally settle for the sender’s DM request.

After assembly the above necessities, the sender will see a toggle with a lock icon after clicking on the brand new message floating motion button. This may open a chat with an eligible recipient and encrypted chats will likely be denoted by a lock icon on the recipient’s profile image.

Twitter’s encrypted DMs are denoted by a lock icon
Picture Credit score: Twitter

Nevertheless, not like messaging companies like Sign and WhatsApp there are at the moment a number of limitations to Twitter’s encrypted DMs function. Twitter hasn’t disclosed what cryptographic scheme it has used to encrypt messages. As of now, teams aren’t supported, so you may solely ship messages to at least one recipient. Solely textual content and hyperlinks will likely be encrypted, which signifies that media, reactions, and all chat metadata just isn’t encrypted.

Twitter additionally says that there’s at the moment no option to confirm the integrity of a dialog, which signifies that Twitter or a malicious third social gathering might compromise an encrypted dialog and customers wouldn’t be alerted. The corporate says that it’s engaged on implementing signature checks and “security numbers” (options carried out by apps like Sign and WhatsApp) to simply permit customers to confirm the integrity of their chats. 

In the meantime, Twitter will solely allow you to sign up to a most of ten gadgets to entry encrypted DMs. You can’t see a listing of registered gadgets, or de-register a tool you now not have entry to. New gadgets is not going to have entry to present encrypted conversations.

Logging out of a tool will delete all of your encrypted chats, in accordance with Twitter, and within the absence of a key backup function, there’s at the moment no option to retrieve these chats besides logging in to the identical gadget. The corporate additionally says that customers will not have the ability to report encrypted messages to Twitter, however means that they’ll block a consumer from sending them DMs and report the account as a substitute.