Twitter’s Privacy Policy is a collection of the guidelines that govern the collection, storage, and use of users’ personal information. When a person agrees to the terms of use while joining the service, they give the company their consent to collect and use that information. This also includes its transfer to other countries for purposes of processing and storage. The Privacy Policy informs users about the type of information that is collected, how it is used, and how to gain control over both.
New users provide basic information that includes a display name, a username, a password, and an email address or phone number. Using a pseudonym can offer more privacy (Karle, 2020). The majority of information is public: tweets, followers, lists, retweets, and comments. In this regard, users have the responsibility to regulate the type of information they post on twitter because most of it is public. Posting sensitive information on the platform gives the company the right to show it publicly, and use their technologies such as application programing interfaces (APIs) and embeds to reach as many people as possible (Twitter, 2020). Providing a phone number gives Twitter the right to send you any information that they want, including advertisements via SMS. Moreover, they use it for marketing purposes and helping others find a user on their platform. However, a user has the right to control notifications sent through email or the phone number. Twitter offers services to make communications private. For example, users can use Direct Messages to communicate privately, protect tweets, and host private broadcasts on Periscope. However, the company has the right to process and store any information related to such communications (Karle, 2020). In that regard, they can collect information about the people a user has communicated with and when. They do not collect information about the content of the messages (Twitter, 2020). Users can use the privacy and safety settings to control the information they share with the company.
When a person users Twitter, they give the company the right to access certain information. For instance, they collect data about the user’s signup and current location by accessing their IP address or device settings (Twitter, 2020). The user has the right to either allow or deny the company the permission to collect, store, and use data about their current precise location or past locations (Karle, 2020). They also track how people interact with others through links posted in their services. Twitter also uses both session and persistent cookies to collect data from users. They also collect “Log data” that includes IP address, location, device information, type of operating system, pages visited, type of browser, and search terms among others (Twitter, 2020). This data is collected even when users use third-party websites that incorporate content from Twitter into their systems. By registering, the company gets the right to receive users’ information from third parties.
Agreeing to the terms of Twitters’ Privacy Policy, gives the company the right to collect, store, and share personal information. Personalization settings can be used to regulate the type of information shared and received. However, the use of cookies and similar technologies can be used to violate users’ privacy.
References
Karle, M. (2020). How to use the most popular platforms and protect your privacy. Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
Twitter. (2020). Twitter privacy policy. Web.