• Encryption has been enabled for Twitter DMs but only for Twitter Blue subscribers.
• The implementation leaves much to be desired with precious few protections to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.
• Twitter said it is working to improve the feature and address the myriad known issues it is aware of.

Encryption for Twitter Direct Messages (DMs) is here and it’s awful but we suppose it’s better than no encryption, right?

Following a proclamation by Elon Musk earlier this week, encrypted DMs for Twitter have been enabled but only for those willing to pay Twitter R144.95 per month. The worst part is that messages aren’t really well encrypted according to Twitter’s own documentation.

Twitter Blue subscribers will see a new option to encrypt messages in DMs with other Twitter Blue subscribers. However, users can’t encrypt messages with anything other than text and links. Group encryption isn’t available and worst of all, encrypted messages can be compromised.

“Currently, we do not offer protections against man-in-the-middle attacks. As a result, if someone–for example, a malicious insider, or Twitter itself as a result of a compulsory legal process–were to compromise an encrypted conversation, neither the sender or receiver would know,” writes Twitter.

The platform is working on addressing this vulnerability. While this implementation isn’t very good we suppose it’s better than no encryption at all.

That having been said, it’s not as good as Musk’s litmus test in which his life is threatened and he’s still not able to read a person’s DMs. As it stands, Musk and anybody else with the means could read your DMs, even if you pay Musk to be a tester.

There’s no word on when Twitter’s DM encryption will improve with only vague promises of “we’re working on it”.

We also aren’t sure if encryption will be exclusive to Twitter Blue subscribers or if the feature will eventually filter down to the rest of the platform.

Twitter’s launch of DM encryption comes after the platform’s owner declared that “WhatsApp cannot be trusted” in a tweet.

WhatsApp responded to this by claiming that the reason for the inordinate amount of microphone usage was down to a “bug on Android that mis-attributes information in their Privacy Dashboard.”

The Meta firm has reportedly asked Google to investigate and remediate the problem.

“Users have full control over their mic settings,” WhatsApp tweeted.

“Once granted permission, WhatsApp only accesses the mic when a user is making a call or recording a voice note or video – and even then, these communications are protected by end-to-end encryption so WhatsApp cannot hear them,” it added.

[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]