section_path: User accounts/Privacy
section_name: Privacy
paragraph_text: Privacy
  
  Tweets are public, but users can also send private "direct messages". Information about who has chosen to follow an account and who a user has chosen to follow is also public, though accounts can be changed to "protected" which limits this information (and all tweets) to approved followers. Twitter collects personally identifiable information about its users and shares it with third parties as specified in its privacy policy. The service also reserves the right to sell this information as an asset if the company changes hands. Advertisers can target users based on their history of tweets and may quote tweets in ads directed specifically to the user.
  
  Twitter launched the beta version of their "Verified Accounts" service on June 11, 2009, allowing people with public profiles to announce their account name. The profile pages of these accounts display a badge indicating their status. On December 14, 2010, the United States Department of Justice issued a subpoena directing Twitter to provide information for accounts registered to or associated with WikiLeaks. Twitter decided to notify its users and said, "... it's our policy to notify users about law enforcement and governmental requests for their information, unless we are prevented by law from doing so."
  
  In May 2011, a claimant known as "CTB" in the case of CTB v Twitter Inc. took action against Twitter at the High Court of Justice of England and Wales, requesting that the company release details of account holders. This followed gossip posted on Twitter about professional footballer Ryan Giggs 's private life. This led to the 2011 British privacy injunctions controversy and the "super-injunction". Tony Wang, the head of Twitter in Europe, said that people who do "bad things" on the site would need to defend themselves under the laws of their own jurisdiction in the event of controversy and that the site would hand over information about users to the authorities when it was legally required to do so. He also suggested that Twitter would accede to a UK court order to divulge names of users responsible for "illegal activity" on the site.
  
  Twitter acquired Dasient, a startup that offers malware protection for businesses, in January 2012. Twitter announced plans to use Dasient to help remove hateful advertisers on the website. Twitter also offered a feature which would allow tweets to be removed selectively by country, before deleted tweets used to be removed in all countries. The first use of the policy was to block the account of German neo-Nazi group Besseres Hannover on October 18, 2012. The policy was used again the following day to remove anti-Semitic French tweets with the hashtag #unbonjuif ("a good Jew"). After the sharing of images showing the killing of American journalist James Foley in 2014, Twitter said that in certain cases it would delete pictures of people who had died after requests from family members and "authorized individuals".
  
  In 2015, following updated terms of service and privacy policy, Twitter users outside the United States were legally served by the Ireland-based Twitter International Company instead of Twitter, Inc. The change made these users subject to Irish and European Union data protection laws. On April 8, 2020, Twitter announced that users outside of the European Economic Area or United Kingdom (thus subject to GDPR) will no longer be allowed to opt out of sharing "mobile app advertising measurements" to Twitter third-party partners.
  
  On October 9, 2020, Twitter took additional steps to counter misleading campaigns ahead of the 2020 US Election. Twitter's new temporary update encouraged users to "add their own commentary" before retweeting a tweet, by making 'quoting tweet' a mandatory feature instead of optional. The social network giant aimed at generating context and encouraging the circulation of more thoughtful content. After limited results, the company ended this experiment in December 2020.
  
  On May 25, 2022, Twitter was fined $150 million for collecting users' phone numbers and email addresses used for security and using them for targeted advertising, required to notify its users, and banned from profiting from "deceptively collected data". The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice stated that Twitter violated a 2011 agreement not to use personal security data for targeted advertising.
  
  In September 2024, the FTC released a report summarizing 9 company responses (including from Twitter) to orders made by the agency pursuant to Section 6(b) of the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 to provide information about user and non-user data collection (including of children and teenagers) and data use by the companies that found that the companies' user and non-user data practices put individuals vulnerable to identity theft, stalking, unlawful discrimination, emotional distress and mental health issues, social stigma, and reputational harm.