In 2020, the infamous “Great Twitter Hack” breached 130 Twitter accounts with hundreds of millions of combined followers—and used them to scam people for money. Worse, the breach may have happened with some kind of help from Twitter employees.
Despite additional safeguards, something like that attack will probably happen again. In the process, hackers could access millions and millions of people’s private direct messages (DMs), because Twitter has so far refused to implement end-to-end encryption on them.
Right now, Twitter employees (and anyone who can bribe or social engineer them) have access to your DMs. All of your DMs. Yep. Even that one.
End-to-end encryption is what protects iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal—heck, even Facebook offers it for Messenger. Given that Twitter is a platform widely used by journalists, dissidents speaking out about repressive governments, and ordinary people to talk smack about their boss/friends/lover/etc, it’s past time for Twitter to offer this basic form of security to its more than 330 million monthly active users. Private messages leaking could cost someone their job—or in extreme cases, their life.
Twitter’s leadership shakeup offers a prime opportunity to broadcast the need for end-to-end encryption. If Elon Musk is serious about free speech, he should side with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Senator Ron Wyden, and the numerous security experts who have called for Twitter to take this basic step. Sign the petition and demand they fix this gaping security hole before something really bad happens.