Twitter takes user privacy and security very seriously, and in an effort to prevent government snooping, the company has secured Twitter emails with TLS (Transport Layer Security) .
Twitter emails previously used a simple communication protocol, which has now been upgraded to an encrypted one (TLS or SSL) using STARTTLS.
“These email security protocols are part of our commitment to continuous privacy improvements, such as securing web traffic using HTTPS,” said Josh Aberant, Postmaster at Twitter.
The SSL/TLS and STARTTLS protocols are equally secure, but the only difference is that: SSL/TLS is simple over an encrypted channel and STARTTLS is about encrypted communication over a simple channel, which provides end-to-end encryption of email and prevents Man-in-the-middle attacks, which are particularly effective and quite difficult to detect.
TLS encryption only works when both the sender and recipient of emails support it, and Twitter admires Gmail and AOL Mail, which already support TLS encryption, and encourages others to use it, "Together, we can protect the privacy of every user," he said.
