• Twitter Begins Turning On The Secure HTTPS By Default

    Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011

    MG Siegler is a general partner at CrunchFund and a columnist for TechCrunch, where he has been writing since 2009. His focus is on Apple. Prior to TechCrunch, MG covered various technology beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. He’s previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and in... → Learn More

    Screen Shot 2011-08-23 at 12.35.02 PM
    Screen Shot 2011-08-23 at 12.35.02 PM

    Back in March, after at least one high profile security incident, Twitter created an option to turn on HTTPS at all times. But you could only enable the more secure way of viewing twitter.com by manually selecting it in your profile (or typing “https://” each time you went to Twitter). Starting today, the service is beginning to enable HTTPS by default.

    At first, this will only be enabled for a small group of users, Twitter says. Over time, they’ll roll it out to more. It’s a welcome change that other services like Gmail have added over the years. Google has even experimented with it for google.com, and Facebook has an option to use it as well after years of avoiding it.

    A lot services avoid using it because it does mean a slight performance hit. Others don’t like it because it scrubs referral data. And it can mean that certain third-party data can act funky. But in the age of Firesheep, HTTPS is becoming necessary.

    If you’re not in the on-by-default test group and want to learn more about HTTPS, you can do so here. Twitter recommends that everyone turns it on while they slowly roll it out to all.


    Company: Twitter
    Website: twitter.com
    Launch Date: March 21, 2006
    Funding: $1.16B

    Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 (launched publicly in July 2006), is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post updates 140 characters long. Twitter “is a real-time information network that connects [users] to the latest stories, ideas, opinions, and news.” The service can be accessed through a variety of methods, including Twitter’s website; text messaging; instant messaging; and third-party desktop, mobile, and web applications. Twitter is currently available in...

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