Although encryption has never been more pervasive, with more and more services deploying strong privacy protections for users, Twitter has been slow on the following the trend. Now, one researcher has created a workaround for using end-to-end encryption with Twitter direct messages.

Twitter encryption for DM and OTR.md

Pidgin (Windows and Linux)

1. Download and install the following:

• Pidgin from https://pidgin.im
• If on Windows, download the OTR library for Pidgin. Linux should include the library by default.

2. After all of these are installed, start Pidgin
3. Click Accounts -> Manage Accounts -- this will bring up the Accounts window
4. In the Accounts window, click the Add button
5. In the Add Account window, change the Protocol dropdown to IRC
6. Enter in the Username you set up with your Bitlbee instance. This will likely be your username.
7. Under the Server field, enter in localhost -- this is assuming that you are running bitlbee on the same box as your chat client
8. In the Advanced tab, change Port to the value you specified in your bitlbee configuration file (default is 6667)
9. Click Add

Adium (MacOS)

1. Download the latest version of Adium from https://adium.im -- Adium includes OTR support out of the box
2. Click Adium in the Menu Bar, then click Preferences. This will open the Preferences window
3. Click on Accounts, then click on the + Menu at the bottom, then select IRC
4. Enter in your username into the Nickname field
5. Enter in localhost into the Hostname field
6. Under Options, change Port to the right number (6667 is the default)
7. Click OK