Tilde in URLs

Is the tilde character (~) still an unsafe character
in URLs, which should be encoded as %7E. Or has it
been accepted as permitted, because of its wide-
spread usage, as a de-facto extension to the URL
standards?
-- 
Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se> (Stockholm University and KTH)
for more info see URL: http://www.dsv.su.se/jpalme/