How to Change Your Privacy and Safety Settings on Twitter

Whether you use Twitter as a platform to share your views or share GIFs with friends, protecting yourself and your followers is crucial. Thankfully, the company has a number of measures in place for that. When you want to learn more or change your privacy and safety settings on Twitter, you can adjust the information tied to your tweets, manage contacts, or deal with direct messages.

How to Access Privacy and Safety Settings on Twitter

In order to access the Privacy and Safety section of your Twitter settings, you’ll need to take a few quick steps. After logging into your account at Twitter, you can find the settings in the same place whether you’re using a web browser or smartphone To access settings, go to Settings & Support > Settings and Privacy, and then choose the Privacy and Safety section.

Changing Privacy Settings on Twitter

Once you have access to the settings in these menus, you can alter the type of content that appears to you on the service. You’ll also be able to able to adjust direct message settings and change how your data is shared on the platform.

Twitter Activity Settings

Twitter activity settings fall into two areas with Your Twitter Activity and Data sharing and personalization. We’re going to start by taking a look at the Audience and Tagging section, which allows you to protect your tweets.

If you only want to allow people who follow you to see your Twitter posts, select Protect your Tweets. You can turn photo tagging on or off if you don’t want to be notified or tagged when someone posts a photo with you in it on the platform. You can set it to allow anyone to tag you or only your followers.

From the Your Tweets section of your Twitter settings, you can activate “sensitivity” mode which will automatically mark and filter any content you might find offensive. If you don’t want to be tagged in photos on Twitter? You can turn off location information on Tweets. This feature sets a location for your tweets, although this may not be ideal for a variety of reasons.

The Content You See settings are tied to the sensitive content settings for Twitter. You can adjust preferences for topics and interests on the platforms here. You can also tweak search settings to hide or show certain content in your results — including blocked accounts. When you need to manage accounts, people, or words you’ve muted, check out the Mute and Block section.

Users that are new to the platform won’t have much to deal with here. If you’re active, however, you may have a full list of blocked or muted accounts to deal with. You can also mute notifications from people with default profile photos and users without a confirmed email or phone number.

If you’ve ever had an unwanted user slide into your DMs, you can deal with it from Direct Messages settings. You can set a filter for low-quality messages or even turn on read receipts. This lets people know you’ve seen their DM. A new setting comes into play with the Spaces tab, which allows users to let their followers see what Twitter Spaces they are listening to or hosting.

The mobile version gives you a few more settings under Spaces as well. You can manage your recording history from within the app or any scheduled Twitter Spaces. That’s handy, but the Discoverability and Contacts settings are more useful for the average user. This lets people that already know your Twitter email address or phone number find you quickly on the platform.

Data Sharing and Personalization Settings

There aren’t as many settings to deal with under Data Sharing and Personalization. This is where you’ll find key privacy features on the platform, however. If you don’t want your data shared, pay close attention to these settings.

Under Ad Preferences, you can toggle personalized ads on or off. Having this activated means Twitter will show you ads based on your activity and interests. That’s the only adjustable setting on the app, but you can tweak your interests and potential advertisers on the web. It’s tied to the Inferred Identity settings which help keep things uniform across multiple devices.

If you want to keep a low profile, you may want to check out Data Sharing with Business Partners. Turning this off keeps them from sharing some of your personal information with businesses. You can also personalize your GPS activity to a degree through Location Information. This setting shows relevant content based on places you’ve been. It can also provide you with information on events happening around you at any time.