Shock! Elon Musk’s encrypted Twitter DMs characteristic will price you pricey • Graham Cluley

Elon Musk could have fired most of the employees in Twitter’s Belief & Security division after buying the corporate in October 2022, however for over a 12 months he has been saying how Twitter DMs should support end-to-end encryption like Sign.

Way back to 2014, Twitter was toying with the idea of introducing encryption to stop hackers, overbearing governments, and even Twitter itself from snooping on customers’ personal conversations – however the safety characteristic had by no means seen the sunshine of day.

After which, late final week, encrypted direct messages finally arrived on Twitter…

…though not for many Twitter customers…

…as a result of Elon Musk had determined that solely customers who pay the $8 per-month Twitter Blue subscription for a “verified” account, can have it…

…and never if the messages contained photographs, motion pictures, or different attachments…

…and never metadata comparable to who you had been sending the message to, or its creation time…

…and never if the message was being despatched to a person who hadn’t ponied up for their very own Twitter Blue subscription…

…after which there’s this, in Twitter’s own words:

“As Elon Musk stated, in the case of Direct Messages, the usual ought to be, if somebody places a gun to our heads, we nonetheless can’t entry your messages. We’re not fairly there but, however we’re engaged on it.”

Oh.

So, this isn’t truly end-to-end encryption in any respect.

As a result of, E2E encrypted messages can solely be learn by the sender and the receiver. However, for now not less than, Twitter will nonetheless be capable of learn your messages.

I don’t suppose this can be a characteristic I might pay for. And it’s actually no competitors for different E2E encrypted messaging companies like Signal, that are free.

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