Taking time to learn and set your preferences will help you keep your account and personal information safe. Keep in mind, that every website works differently and offers different settings.
Consider the following when reviewing your Twitter account settings.
If you choose to have a public account, knowing the different features of Twitter may help you decide what you will and will not Tweet. For example, your followers can retweet your content to their followers, which can lead to other users seeing content that was not meant for them.
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.
Geolocation uses data acquired from a computer or mobile device to identify a physical location. Twitter lets you select whether to include your whereabouts on each individual Tweet. Check out this support article to learn more about How To Use the Location Feature on Mobile Devices.
While sharing your location allows your followers to comment and make recommendations on things to do or places to go near where you are, there are also risks involved with sharing your location publicly. Since you may not know all your followers, it’s a good idea to be cautious. To learn more about tweeting your location, check out the Twitter support article on FAQs about Tweet location.
Other companies have developed applications to broaden your Twitter experience. Before connecting to a third-party application, be sure to visit their website and familiarize yourself with their Terms of Service. To learn more about how to connect and revoke third-party applications, check out this article on how to connect and revoke third party applications.
Keep in mind, whether you are posting content on Twitter or another website, one of the many search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo!, Bing) may pick up your content through a search cache. This means that your information or photo is not only up on the website you have chosen to use, but it is now also in a public search engine. If you do not want the Tweet you are posting to end up in a search cache, learning and setting your preferences may be a great help. For example, if you do not want your Tweets to be potentially found on a search engine, you can set your Tweets to protected.
