Looking to ensure that users are being securely delivered to their intended web destinations, Twitter announced that new links wrapped with its t.co wrapper will begin using the HTTPS URL scheme as of Oct. 1.
The change applies only to new links and will increase the length of wrapped URLs by a single character, a Thursday announcement post said, adding that non-HTTPS sites may see what appears to be a dip in referral numbers from Twitter.
“Based on our estimates you may see a 10 [percent] drop in traffic attribution from Twitter as a result of this security change, decreasing over time as users update their browsers to the latest versions supporting referrer policy,” the announcement said.
“The t.co TLS certificate will be updated to extended validation with SHA-256 for supporting requestors,” the post added.
