Twitter is changing its privacy policy to give advertisers more information about you. Learn what settings you need to change to keep your data private.
Twitter announced it has updated its privacy policy “to further improve and personalize our services, connecting you with the stories, brands and organic content you care about most.” Of course, the way you get connected to such personalization is by allowing Twitter to share more information with advertisers about you and your browsing habits. The changes will go into effect on June 18. You’ll be opted into these changes, but Twitter has expanded privacy settings that give you greater control and let you stop Twitter from sharing your information.
What’s changing?
There are three big changes to Twitter’s privacy policy:
1. Web data stored longer
Twitter uses cookies to store information about you when you visit a site that has an embedded tweet or Twitter share button. Currently, it stores this information for 10 days but starting on June 18, it will keep this data for 30 days.
2. More data sharing
In addition to storing web data longer, Twitter is changing how it shares this data with its partners (read: advertisers). The wording is a bit vague but the changes certainly aren’t being made to share less of your data: “We’ve updated how we share non-personal, aggregated and device-level data, including through some select partnership agreements that allow the data to be linked to your name, email, or other personal information — but only when you give your consent to those partners.”
3. No more Do Not Track
Twitter is no longer supporting Do Not Track, which you could enable in most browsers to stop advertisers from tracking your browsing history. Twitter states that despite its early support “an industry-standard approach to Do Not Track did not materialize.”
Which privacy settings should I change?
The privacy policy changes don’t take effect until next month but you can opt out now using the Twitter app or website. To do so, head to your account page, open Settings and go to Settings and privacy > Privacy and safety > Personalization and data. At the top of this page is an option to disable all personalization and data settings; on the Twitter website, click the Disable all button, and on the mobile app, tap the toggle switch at the top. There are granular personalization controls below. I found that I needed to disable the Personalization and data setting on both the Web and the app, so be sure to check both.
Elliot, Matt. “If you have a Twitter account, change these privacy settings now” CNET May 2017