Twitter Makes HTTPS Default For Signed In Users

Twitter users had an option to turn on https for their connections to the popular social messaging site for quite a while. Users who turned the feature on, benefited from encrypted communication with Twitter which blocked snooping and eavesdropping attacks, and recommended when for connections to the site on public (wireless) networks. This was especially useful for Twitter users on the go, but recommended for all users as it should not have any visible negative effects.

Twitter yesterday announced that they enabled HTTPS for all of their signed in users by default. Nothing changes for users who have enabled HTTPS previously in the site preferences. Everyone else will now notice that Twitter will automatically load https://twitter.com/ whenever they visit the website. Users who enter http://twitter.com/ are automatically redirected to the https version of the site.

While all users are now moved to secure https connections, some may experience connectivity issues because of this. Those users can disable the new feature in the settings.

Always use HTTPS is a preference under Account there. You may need to scroll down until you see it on the page. Just remove the checkmark and click on save changes afterwards to disable forced https connections on Twitter. You need to enter your Twitter password for confirmation to save the settings to your account.

Once disabled, you won't be redirected anymore to https if you want to load the http version of the site. You basically get the choice to load http://twitter.com/ or https://twitter.com/

Twitter is not the first company that moves all of their users to https. We have seen similar moves by companies such as Google or Facebook as well.

You can read the original announcement at the official Twitter blog. (via Techdows)

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