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Twitter privacy and security

Last modified: 2012-02-27 10:18:26 EET

Twitter defines itself as "a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages". Basically, you can write short messages (tweets) about what you are doing or what you like or dislike for your friends, family and co-workers.

General guidelines on staying safe at Twitter

First, do not log on to Twitter via the standard, unencrypted page http://twitter.com! To keep your credentials at least a tad safer, always use the secure page instead: https://twitter.com. Also turn on the Always use HTTPS option in Twitter settings as described later.

Second, do not tweet sensitive information: your passwords, secret work projects, etc. Do not post things that can harm you later. For example, "I really hate my stupid boss now" might get you fired if your boss finds out about it...
All tweets are public (visible to the whole world) and you cannot create lists or groups in Twitter and specify custom viewing rights for your tweets, so please be really careful about what you post!
If you need total privacy with your friends/followers, use the Protect my tweets option to be visible to selected persons only.

Third, do not trust all people who want to follow you - there are many cyber-crooks among them. And believe me, Madonna (or any other celebrity) is not interested in following what you ate for breakfast - check how many people the (most probably fake) account is following and how many followers the account has. If the ratio is something like 1000:6, something is really wrong. I mean, every real celebrity should have thousands of followers and he/she just does not have the time to follow the tweets of thousands other people.

The second easy criterion is to see how many tweets the person who wants to follow you has - if the account is already following thousands, but has only one or two tweets, something stinks again.

You should block such followers immediately to prevent possible theft of personal data. To block an account, click Followers in the bar on the left (under your picture and name).

Find the person you want to block and click the button right to Follow button. Select Block @<user name> from the menu.
Please note that Twitter user antimalwarescan is not a spammer or anything bad, this is just an example!

If you accidentally blocked a wrong person, you can click Undo right away to unblock the account.
Be wary!

If you've approved a malicious app on Twitter and need to remove it, open the user menu (on the top right) and click Settings.

Click Apps tab on the left.

Find the Twitter app you need to remove and click Revoke Access. Don't worry if you accidentally deny a good app's access to your profile - the button turns into an undo button until you move to another page.
Please note that Ping.fm is not a malicious application, this is just an example!

Fourth, always sign out of Twitter before closing your web browser or navigation to another web page. The reason is that clicking a Tweet button on a web page starts sending your browsing habits - all web pages you visit - to Twitter. Logging off Windows or shutting down or rebooting your computer will not help, you really-really must sign out. Do this by opening the user menu on the top right and clicking Sign out.

Configuring Twitter settings

After you log in to your Twitter account, open the menu with your user name (on the top right) and click Settings.

Preventing other people from looking you up by e-mail address

Verify you have Account tab open on the left.
If you do not want to be found by your e-mail address, clear the Let others find me by my email address box.

Hiding Tweet Location (previously Geotagging)

First, you can hide your location information in your tweets. Yep, you do not need to enter your exact location in that Location box either.
Why might publishing your exact location, aka geotagging be dangerous? Here's an excerpt from Twitter support page:

Things you should consider:

• Geotagging uses your exact location.
• Anyone can see it: even if you delete it, we cannot guarantee it will be removed from every partner.
• Turning it off does not remove historical data. You can, however, remove all of your prior data.

If your vacation photo lets everyone know that you're in Paris, France right now, criminals might use that information. For example, how about robbers at your house while you're somewhere far away? Yeah, not so likely, but you never know...

To turn off Tweet Location (geotagging), clear the Add a location to my Tweets check box.

If you want to remove all location data from your previous tweets, click that Delete all location information button. Twitter will confirm this action with a pop-up dialog.

Configuring Tweet Media

As Twitter added support for photos and videos, it might be necessary to set some Tweet Media options.
The Display media that may contain sensitive content option is generally up to you.
In case you tweet photos and videos that may be disturbing to some of your followers, please put a check mark in the Mark my media as containing sensitive content box.

Showing your tweets only to people you trust

Typically, all tweets are visible to everyone - they are visible in Twitter public timeline, a page for latest tweets from all Twitter users. So anyone can see and read them. Search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo can index them and that indexed information can be revealed later by a simple search. Remember that stupid boss example from above?

To hide your tweets from public and show them to your accepted followers only, check the Protect my tweets box.

The most important Twitter setting - secure connection (HTTPS)

The last setting is HTTPS Only. Make sure you put a check mark to Always use HTTPS check box as this protects from stealing your user name and password.

Click the Save changes button after changing Account settings. Then move on to the Mobile tab from the left.

Preventing other people from looking you up by phone number

Because Twitter allows finding people by their phone numbers, it is strongly recommended to verify that the Let others find me by my phone number check box is cleared.

Changing your Twitter account password

If you need to change your Twitter password, open the menu with your name and click Settings.
 

Click Password tab and type your present password into Current Password field.
Enter the new password into New Password and Verify New Password fields. Please create a strong and unique password, and consider using some free password management program for securely storing and auto-filling user names and passwords.
Click Save changes to confirm password change.

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