Twitter uses cookies and other similar technologies, such as pixels
or local storage, to help provide you with a better, faster, and safer
experience. Here are some of the ways that the Twitter
services—including our various websites, SMS, APIs, email notifications,
applications, buttons, widgets, and ads—use these technologies: to log
you into Twitter, save your preferences, personalize the content you
see, protect against spam and abuse, and show you more relevant ads.
Below we explain how Twitter, our partners, and other third parties
use these technologies, your privacy settings and the other options you
have.
What are cookies, pixels, and local storage?
Cookies are small files that websites place on your computer as you
browse the web. Like many websites, Twitter uses cookies to discover how
people are using our services and to make them work better.
A pixel is a small amount of code on a web page or in an email
notification. As many services do, we use pixels to learn whether you’ve
interacted with certain web or email content. This helps us measure and
improve our services and personalize your experience on Twitter.
Local storage is an industry-standard technology that allows a
website or application to store information locally on your computer or
mobile device. We use local storage to customize what we show you based
on your past interactions with Twitter.
Why does Twitter use these technologies?
Twitter uses these technologies to deliver, measure, and improve our
services in various ways. These uses generally fall into one of the
following categories:
-
Authentication and security:
- To log you into Twitter
- To protect your security
- To help us detect and fight spam, abuse, and other activities that violate the Twitter Rules
For example, these technologies help
authenticate your access to Twitter and prevent unauthorized parties
from accessing your account. They also let us show you appropriate
content through our services.
-
Preferences:
- To remember information about your browser and your preferences
For example, cookies help us remember
your preferred language or country that you are in. We can then provide
you with Twitter content in your preferred language without having to
ask you each time you visit Twitter. We can also customize content based
on your country, such as showing you what topics are trending near you,
or to withhold certain content based on applicable local laws. Learn
more about
Trends and
country withheld content.
-
Analytics and research:
- To help us improve and understand how people use our services, including Twitter buttons and widgets, and Twitter Ads
For example, cookies help us test
different versions of our services to see which particular features or
content users prefer. We might also optimize and improve your experience
on Twitter by using cookies to see how you interact with our services,
such as when and how often you use them and what links you click on. We
may use Google Analytics to assist us with this.
Learn more about the cookies you may encounter through our use of Google Analytics.
-
Personalized content:
- To customize our services with more relevant content, like tailored trends, stories, ads, and suggestions for people to follow
For example, local storage tells us which
parts of your Twitter timeline you have viewed already so that we can
show you the appropriate new content. Cookies can help us make smarter
and more relevant suggestions about who you might enjoy following based
on your recent visits to websites that have integrated Twitter buttons
or widgets. We can suggest people who are frequently followed by other
Twitter users that visit the same websites.
Learn more about tailored suggestions and your privacy controls, which include your
Twitter account settings and
Do Not Track browser setting.
-
Advertising:
- To help us deliver ads, measure their performance, and make them
more relevant to you based on criteria like your activity on Twitter and
visits to our ad partners' websites
For example, we use cookies and pixels to
tailor ads and measure their performance. Using these technologies, we
can show you ads and evaluate their effectiveness based on your visits
to our ad partners' websites. This helps advertisers provide
high-quality ads and content that might be more interesting to you.
Learn more about tailored ads and your privacy controls, which include your
Twitter account settings,
Do Not Track browser setting, and the opt-out pages of
Twitter's ad partners.
Where are these technologies used?
Twitter uses these technologies on our own websites and services and
on other websites that have integrated our services. This includes our
advertising and platform partners’ websites and sites that use Twitter
buttons or widgets, like our Tweet or follow buttons. Third parties may
also use these technologies when you interact with their content from
within our services, like when you click a link or stream video on
Twitter from a third-party website.
What are my privacy options?
We are committed to offering you meaningful privacy choices. You
have a number of options to control or limit how Twitter, our partners,
and other third parties use cookies:
- For tailoring suggestions on Twitter: If you do not want Twitter to
tailor suggestions for you based on your recent visits to websites that
have integrated Twitter buttons or widgets, you can turn off this
feature using your Twitter account settings or Do Not Track browser setting. This removes from your browser the unique cookie that enables the feature. Learn more here.
- For tailoring ads on Twitter: If you do not want Twitter to tailor
ads based on our ad partners’ information, including cookies, you can
turn off this feature using your Twitter account settings, Do Not Track browser setting, or the opt-out pages of Twitter's ad partners.
Then Twitter will not match your account to cookie or other information
shared by our ad partners for tailoring ads. Learn more here.
- For using cookies: You can modify your settings in most web browsers
to accept or deny all cookies, or to request your permission each time a
site attempts to set a cookie. Although cookies are not required for
some parts of our services, Twitter may not work properly if you disable
cookies entirely. For example, you cannot log into Twitter.com if
you've disabled all cookie use.
Where can I learn more?
