If you’re like me, you’re probably on the go with your business all throughout the day. Checking emails off your phone, responding to social media, and occasionally stopping by the local coffee shop for lunch while using your laptop to work. It’s very convenient but also should be used with caution.
These public wifi areas are they’re own enemies just by being public. Anyone can join on the network, and every device on that network is susceptible to attacks, key loggers, and more. I’m not trying to say the end of the world is near and only use your devices on your home network (ironically most home networks are even less secured than public ones), but you should be aware of some potential issues. I’ll type another post about them another time.
For the many of you using Twitter, this is a great new option that will keep you within HTTPS (Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol). If you look at the top of your browser in the address bar, you should see http:// and a secured site/page would show https://. Prior to today you could login to Twitter via secured site if you manually typed it in your address bar. This new update from Twitter allows you to stay in that secured state though as you navigate around the site and your personal settings. In contrast, Facebook is still working on this, but whenever switching from say your Fan page to your Personal page, you’d fall out of HTTPS to HTTP. If you’re not paying attention you may barely even notice this.
Here’s how you can quickly update your Twitter settings. Log into Twitter, and then hit the Settings link and at the bottom of the “Account” tab, you’ll see the new “Always use HTTPS” check box. Select it and hit save and you’re done.
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to just replace your current favorites or bookmarks to https://twitter.com on all your devices. Have you had any issues with public wifi and your sensative information? Let me know in the comments below.
Thanks for this! I’d been reading up on some of the HTTPS security, but had not been aware that Twitter had implemented it.
Thanks for commenting Peter! Yea you definitely want to keep an eye on this setting. Especially if you’re like me and you login to do work on the go at various wifi hotspots.