Twitter’s Privacy Policy in 2021

330 million people from around the world use Twitter every month. They post threads, send direct messages, and upload images tens of thousands of times a day. Before you do any of that, though, you have to agree to Twitter’s terms of service, and critically, their privacy policy. Even though they may have agreed to it, many people haven’t read the terms or don’t know what’s actually contained in these agreements.

Twitter is very open about the fact that it gathers information on you from a variety of sources, and clarifying what this means is critically important for you to be safe and secure online.

Freely Given Information

The first and most obvious thing Twitter takes is the information you give them yourself. This includes things like what you put in your bio, your twitter handle, your likes, tweets, retweets, photos, and more. Additionally, when you create an account, you let the platform have your phone number and/or email address.

Surprisingly (or maybe not) Twitter also admits to storing information sent through private DMs. This is limited to the conversation’s metadata, such as the participants, and what time messages were sent; however, no details about the contents themselves are gathered, other than a peripheral scan for abuse content.

Received Information

Twitter receives more info on its users than you may realize. This is due in large part to how the internet is structured, but it’s still good to keep in mind. Here’s a short list of information Twitter collects about all its users that they don’t consciously consent to.

• Location
• Cookies
• IP Address
• Browser Type
• Operating System
• Referring webpage
• Pages visited
• Mobile carrier
• Device information
• Search terms

While this may seem scary at first, it’s good to keep in mind that a lot of this comes with the territory of being on the internet. If you’re worried about people knowing your location based on your IP address, you can read about VPNs here.

What do they do with all this information?

Twitter reserves the right to disclose your information to a variety of people. They are quick to highlight in their Terms of Privacy that they work with Law Enforcement to prevent things like abuse material or malicious organization from festering on the platform, but the sharing goes a lot further than that.

When you use Twitter, much of your personal data is sold to advertisers. According to the platform, this is limited to things like engagement numbers, location, and “inferred interests” that they create based on all the other information they’ve gathered on you.

How do you stop Twitter from farming your personal data?

We plan on detailing all the ways you can keep your digital footprint safe on Twitter in the near future, but deleting those old tweets lying around containing compromising information is a great place to start. Even tweets that seem innocuous will provide invaluable clues that reveal who you are, so you shouldn’t waste any time getting started.

To make your data more secure immediately, go to redact.dev/download today, and begin your journey to a clean online presence.