Twitter introduces ‘privacy center’ and changes privacy policy

Twitter has added a new section to the service in which the company explains more about developments around privacy. The Privacy Center will feature announcements around the topic and the company will tell you about new privacy products and tools.

Twitter admits that there is ‘room for improvement’ when it comes to privacy friendliness, the company writes in a blog post. With the new Privacy Center Twitter wants to make clearer what it does to protect users’ privacy, what new tools are available to them, and how Twitter handles security incidents. Twitter also wants to focus on solving old, existing problems in the future, and it wants to apply more privacy by design to new products it builds.

Twitter will also change its privacy terms from January 1 next year. This makes a better distinction between the European and the international market. European users therefore fall under a different entity, so that Twitter will soon be able to test new settings and features for only that group. This is especially useful in connection with the GDPR. Twitter writes that it has always built the service “with privacy in mind”, although the company does not explain what it means exactly. Earlier, the social network had suffered from a number of data scandals. For example, in October it was announced that e-mail addresses and telephone numbers were being misused for advertisements. The company has also been criticized for years from users who say they do not feel safe there. They believe that Twitter offers too few opportunities to prevent intimidating behaviour.