Thanks to the Internet, everyone is more connected and information is more accessible than ever. As a result, many people have more concerns about protecting their private information than ever before. Read on to learn more about what you can do to protect your private information.
Remember, by default Tweets are public and can be seen by anyone. If you want to limit who can see your Tweets, you can protect your Tweets. If you set your Tweets to protected, remember that the privacy of those Tweets is still dependent on the trustworthiness of the people you authorize to view them. Please keep in mind that any Tweets posted before you protected your Tweets were displayed publicly and may be available in search or through third party sites.
You are in control of how much information you share on Twitter or any other website. Don’t post information you consider to be private (like a credit card number), and be thoughtful about when you want to publicly share your location. People are not always who they claim to be online; be wary of any communication that asks for your private contact information, personal information, or passwords.
When you set up your account, be sure to choose a strong password (at least 10 characters that include upper and lower case characters, numbers, and symbols). We highly recommend that you use a unique password for each website you use; that way, if one account gets compromised, the rest are safe. For more info on selecting a secure password, check out these password tips from Google.
Also, please use a secure and private email address to associate with your Twitter account. If you forget your password, you'll be able to get instructions for resetting it emailed to that address.
Twitter will never email you, Direct Message you, or @reply you asking for your password.
We will never ask you to download something or sign in to a non-Twitter website.
Never open an attachment or install any software from an email that claims to be from us; it's not.
If we suspect your account has been phished or hacked, we may reset your password to prevent the hacker from misusing your account. In this case, we'll email you a link to where you can reset your password. Again, this link will always be on the http://twitter.com/ website, and we will never ask you to email us your old password.
If you forget your password, you can learn to change or recover your password by reading this Twitter Support article.
Tip: If you're getting password reset emails you didn't request, you might consider verifying a phone with your account to prevent other users from mistakenly typing your username into our password reset form.
Not everyone has the same definition of what is private and what should be shared. If a friend or connection has posted information you prefer to be kept private, contact them and ask them to take down the content. Likewise, be considerate of others. If someone requests you remove information that you posted about them, please respect their privacy and consider taking it down. This Twitter Support article explains how to delete a Tweet.
If someone has posted your private information and refuses to take it down, review our policy about private information posted on Twitter. If the account is violating our policy, then you can file a report and we will investigate the account. If the account is in violation, we will suspend the account.
