Musk announces launch of encrypted DMs for Twitter Blue subscribers

Twitter chief Elon Musk on May 11 announced the launch of encrypted direct messages on the social media platform, something he had said the company was working on.

“Early version of encrypted direct messages just launched. Try it, but don’t trust it yet,” Musk posted in a tweet, The Economic Times reports.

On May 9, Musk had revealed other soon-to-be-incorporated features in the micro-blogging site, including voice and video call, and DM (direct message) replies to messages on a thread.

Twitter’s encrypted messages feature comes with certain caveats. The encryption feature, for instance, is opt-in and not turned on by default. Also, it is only available to verified users, which means that one has to be either a verified business on Twitter, a government official, or a Twitter Blue subscriber, to be able to send encrypted DMs.

According to a report by US-based tech publication Wired, Musk’s encrypted messages do not prevent "man-in-the-middle" attacks. This means the messages are open to manipulation and snooping by third parties. The company has also refrained from calling the messages ‘end-to-end encrypted’, a system of encryption where only the sender and receiver can access messages, as WhatsApp does. The report also mentions that encryption does not work for group messages and visual media.

In the past, Musk has been vocal about the need for privacy on online platforms.