The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has reiterated to Twitter that it should subject all direct messages (DMs) to end-to-end encryption to provide users with more privacy and security. The digital rights organization has been calling for this for years but the most recent breach has pushed it to demand the feature again.
The EFF said that with hackers gaining access to admin tools at Twitter, encrypting the DMs would have meant hackers couldn’t have seen the contents of direct messages, offering more protection. The rights group also pointed to the fact that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey reassured Senator Ron Wyden two years ago that end-to-end encryption was being worked on.
Earlier today, Twitter said in a statement that going forward it will be taking action to tighten up its security. It’s not clear what this tightening up will look like but hopefully, it will include end-to-end encryption for DMs.
One of Twitter’s main rivals, Facebook, already offers end-to-end encryption on some of its products including WhatsApp and optionally on Facebook Messenger. The messaging apps, Signal and iMessage, also offer users with encryption features for greater security. While Twitter may be under pressure from law enforcement to keep DMs unencrypted, the EFF believes that securing them is “a no-brainer”.