As with all social media platforms, whatever you post on Twitter could become publicly shared all over the internet. You may think that only your Followers will see your post, but if even one of your Followers re-tweets what you posted, the content of your post could actually go viral. We hear of this quite often in the news, where someone has regrets about one of their tweets so they delete it, but it has already been seen and shared by others.
Twitter does have some good privacy settings, but nothing online is perfect and there are no guarantees of privacy.
How Do I Protect My Privacy On Twitter?
The best policy is that if you want to keep something private, don’t post it on any social media site. There are always people watching and gossiping, and they would love to share some juicy content or some type of ‘dirt’. Nevertheless, Twitter does provide Privacy Settings. Just click on your profile picture at the top right and select Settings. Next, select Security and Privacy. At this point you should see a list of settings that you can enable or disable just by putting a check mark in the box. For example, by default, anyone can Follow you and most people want as many followers as possible, however, that is where privacy falls apart. If you check “Protect My Tweets”, people will have to request to follow you and if you approve they will see your tweets, but no one else.
Can You Get A Virus From Twitter?
You might be surprised to learn that you can get a virus or some other type of malware from Twitter. How it happens is that someone inserts a link in their tweet that piques your curiosity. Maybe it’s a link to a “make easy money” program at a time when you have no job and your rent is due. You click the link, your browser loads that website and your browser also loads the malware onto your device. It’s that simple. How to avoid this? Be careful what links you click and be sure to have AntiVirus software on your device that monitors your web activity.
The Twitter Privacy Policy
On Twitters Privacy page, their first statement is that Twitter is public and tweets are viewable and searchable by anyone around the world. That should give you a good idea of the Twitter platform. They go on to say that they provide Protected Tweets and Direct Messaging, so that’s a good thing. They admit that Twitter collects your IP address and the type of device that you are using. Twitter also admits that they collect the type of content that you have read, Liked, Re-tweeted, your age, your language and other “signals” in order that they can show you more relevant content and, of course, more relevant advertising.
Where To Find Security and Privacy Settings
If you are using the mobile app, tap your profile picture. On a PC, click More in the left sidebar. In either case, you should see a link for Settings and Privacy. Probably the most important security setting would be your password settings because if your account is ever hacked, the first thing the hacker would do is change your password, thereby locking you out. To thwart this you can have Twitter require more information such as your phone number or your email address during the login process. You can do this by checking the Password Reset Protection box. To really enhance your login security, you can enable Two-Factor Authentication.