Last night foursquare rolled out a change to their servers that moves all connections to HTTPS across their website, mobile site and all clients. It’s a proactive move to enhance security for all foursquare accounts.
HTTPS is a secure version of the HTTP protocol that powers the web. It encrypts web sessions with SSL, making Wi-Fi and other network connections much more secure, especially in light of the FireSheep plugin for Firefox that makes monitoring unsecured web traffic trivially easy (interestingly, FireSheep was developed by Eric Butler, who also created FoursquareX, a desktop foursquare client for Mac OS X).
Facebook and Twitter have recently rolled out HTTPS to their servers as an option, but the move by foursquare makes it the default for all connections. This increases security for everyone, regardless of how they connect to foursquare and without changing any settings.
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#1 by 5square on April 6, 2011 - 12:26 pm
What a sad state of affairs for Foursquare on Facebook. They posted this news and it just opened a world of people complaining about how their check-ins wont post to FB…
I think this is a great move by 4sq.
Sure… if you want to link 4sq to other outlets, it might take a little renegotiating… but this is in the users benefit..
I replied to 4sq’s Facebook post about this with..
“My hair hurts. They are killing public broadcasting. Its still cold out. I need a new car. Oh…. Im sorry.. I thought this was a place to bitch about things. Silly me… To think people would be happy with something that is fun and free… Instead of complaining about Foursquare not being able to keep up with you posting every check in on Facebook… STOP POSTING EVERY CHECKIN TO FACEBOOK… and this ship will sail a lot smoother. Check Foursquare’s Blog for yourself if you think Im just being a jerk.”
The hater FB messages havent stopped since…
Good Work foursquare… I stand behind your decision.
#2 by Mia on April 6, 2011 - 2:11 pm
Could this possibly explain why I haven’t been able to load nearby venues today? My app won’t seem to connect.
#3 by Chris Thompson on April 6, 2011 - 3:34 pm
Which app are you using? It shouldn’t have an effect, but you never know.
#4 by Mia on April 7, 2011 - 9:05 am
I’m using BlackBerry. I have three friends who have been experiencing problems with their Foursquare apps as well (two of them are BlackBerry users and one of them has an iPhone). The ones with BlackBerry complain that they have been experiencing difficulty finding venues to check-in (they have to type in keywords instead of finding venues nearby), while the one iPhone user says she hasn’t been able to log in at all.
Personally, I haven’t been able to search at all. I click on “check-in” and it searches for over a minute and then it just stops. With no search results. I was able to load my check-in history this morning although most of the category icon won’t load. Some of my badges’ imagine files also won’t load. Now, I haven’t been able to load the check-in history at all.
The curious thing about it is that I’ve been able to check-in via the mobile site and when I refresh my BlackBerry app, it updates to my last checked-in venue. I also can’t shout anything.
I don’t know if this is relevant to the switch to HTTPS, but I was trying to clean up some venues (merge and edit) and the pink pin wouldn’t load, although the blue pin was there. Very strange.
#5 by Alex on April 6, 2011 - 5:01 pm
it’s been effecting symbian users. i’ve googled around and saw some other reports of people not being able to login from the app. i know i’ve been experiencing the same thing since early morning (1am) and all day today.
#6 by Chris Thompson on April 7, 2011 - 9:38 am
They rolled out another change last night that should fix the login issues for Symbian users.
#7 by Alex on April 8, 2011 - 12:16 am
yes, 4sqsupport let me know that it’s all good from now on.
#8 by 4sqpartners on April 8, 2011 - 11:47 pm
Great, but is the domain using DNSSEC?