Twitter has reportedly put on hold a plan to encrypt its users’ direct messages. The plan was mentioned in a New York Times piece in October last year, in the context of big tech companies getting really annoyed with NSA surveillance, but was never officially announced. Now, according to The Verge’s sources, the project has been dropped, despite the fact that it would have shut out hackers and made it harder for spies to snoop without a court order. Twitter apparently gave no explanation for this, though The Verge theorizes that the plan may have been shelved because the firm is rethinking its direct messaging strategy.
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