Taking a cue from Facebook, Twitter has finally rolled out the ability for users to log into their accounts through a public hot spot without fear of it being hijacked by a hacker.
Today, we’re taking an important step to make it easier to manage the security of your Twitter experience – we are adding a user setting that lets you always use HTTPS when accessing Twitter.com. Using HTTPS for your favorite Internet services is particularly important when using them over unsecured WiFi connections. (Official Twitter Blog)
Unless you want to be the latest victim of someone using Firesheep, then it is highly recommended that you switch over to secure logging as soon as possible.
You can activate the security feature by clicking on your username (in the top right hand corner), then selecting “Settings” and then scrolling down to the section that says “HTTPS only.”
Twitter oddly prompts you to re-enter your password to confirm this setting, although once initiated you will be able to simply log into twitter without manually adding HTTPS every time.
Twitter has updated their iOS app for secure logging, although the official Android and Windows Phone 7 apps have apparently not received this feature (so you might want to use a third party app that has until official ones receive an update).
Author: Darnell Clayton
Darnell Clayton is a geek who discovered blogging long before he heard of the word “blog” (he called them “web journals” then).
When he is not tweeting, friendfeeding, or blogging about space, he enjoys running, reading and describing himself in third person.
