6 Easy Steps to Regain Your Privacy on Twitter | Total Security

Disable Ads, Protect Your Activity Outside of Twitter, and More.

Those of you who have been playing with Security Privacy Update for the past few weeks know that we have worked together to regain some control of our  Facebook,  Instagram, and  TikTok data. Each week, I have given you a simple task, less than five minutes, that you can do to recover some of your privacy and data from the big social media companies. Today we are going to address the latest installment:  Twitter.

Twitter, like the other social media giants we've talked about, likes to collect data about you and sell it to advertisers. According to its  Privacy Policy : 

“Our advertising partners and affiliates share information with us, such as browser cookie identifiers, mobile device identifiers, hashed email addresses, demographic or interest data, and content viewed or actions taken on a website or application. Some of our advertising partners, in particular our advertisers, also allow us to collect similar information directly from their website or application by integrating our advertising technology. "

Basically, they are collecting information about you and combining it with information from other sources to show you advertisements for things that you are more likely to buy. If that's okay with you, that's okay! But if not, here is this week's Privacy Update.

Monday: Put It on the Calendar

This Monday is the same as the last three Mondays, everyone: put each step on your calendar so you remember to do it. I recommend setting it at the same time every day to get in the habit. 

And if you've made our other privacy updates, it's even easier because you already know your time! Connect them to your calendar and that's it.

Tuesday: Disable Ads

The first thing you should do is open Twitter and then search for Security and Privacy.

On the desktop, it's below the three dots (More) in the far left column. On mobile devices, it's below the three-line icon in the upper-left corner. This will be our command station this week as we work to regain some privacy from Twitter.

Click or tap "Privacy & Security" and then scroll down to "Ads Preferences." Unclick "personalized ads" and, in theory, that should prevent Twitter from using your data to show you ads. However, it doesn't unlock all the interests they've collected about you, which seems a bit shady. So if you want to get rid of them too, click on "Interests" and you can see all the things Twitter is using to target ads to you. I like Facebook, there is no 'delete all' button, so unclicking all of these may take a second. Fire up a podcast or something, it'll make it go faster.

Wednesday: Block Activity Outside of Twitter

Today we are going to prevent Twitter from tracking what you do outside of  Twitter. In the same Settings area, go to "Privacy and security" and then to "Personalization and data". Uncheck the boxes next to "Allow use of Twitter content on the web" and "Customize based on your inferred identity.". This will prevent Twitter from using the data it collects through embed codes on the web.

Thursday: Do not Allow Data Exchange

I think Twitter's own explanation of what it means to "Share Data with Business Partners" says it all: "When enabled, this allows Twitter to share additional information with those partners to help support the business management of Twitter, including conducting of Twitter marketing activities on other sites and apps more relevant to you. "

Come in, thanks. Go to "Privacy and security", then "Share data with business partners". Uncheck "Allow sharing of additional information with business partners" and you're good to go.

Friday: Turn off Location Information

Twitter says they use your location information to personalize the content you see. But overall, I don't like my location being tracked everywhere. So let's remove this tracker today, shall we?

Go to the same tab "Privacy and security" and then to "Location information". Uncheck "Customize based on where you've been." You can also take a look at the places you've been that are already registered, but you can only see them if the "Customize based on where you've been" option is still checked. So do it before unchecking and choose if you want to remove what is there.

Saturday: Disable all Ads 

Now we explain how to deactivate the ads in each of the large social media companies. And we did it that way because we think your preferences might be different for different. But there is actually a way to opt-out of receiving personalized ads on all your platforms, which is the network advertising site. If you don't want to be tracked anywhere for the ads, they will guide you through the process.

Sunday: Find the Funniest Twitter Thread

Your mission for today: find a Twitter thread that makes you laugh out loud. Share it with a friend or loved one. That's!

As the end of the 2020 approaches, I hope you feel that you have achieved better management of your privacy with our privacy update. See you next year; We have even more ways to help you regain control of your planned data for 2021. 

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