Photo: Sattalat Phukkum (Shutterstock)
According to a new report on Platformer, after alienating advertisers and losing revenue, Twitter plans to sell location data and phone numbers to advertisers, whether you like it or not. Now is a great time to remove that information from your account. Even if Musk’s platform never implements these changes, you’re probably better off removing that data if you’re concerned.
How to remove your phone number from Twitter
If you saved your phone number on Twitter, you can go to your account’s phone settings page to remove it. However, you might not be able to scrub your number if you receive login codes via SMS. If that’s that case for you, switch to a different form of two-factor authentication before removing your phone number. SMS-based login codes aren’t very secure in the first place, so it’s a good idea to make the switch anyway. Not only are authentication apps more secure, but they also help you avoid sharing your phone number with companies that sell your data for profit.
When you’re ready to make the change, go to Twitter’s two-factor authentication page and uncheck Text message. You can switch to Authentication app and use apps such as 1Password, Google Authenticator, or Authy to receive login codes. If you own a physical security key such as YubiKey, you can use that to authenticate your Twitter logins as well.
How to remove your location data from Twitter
It’s a terrible idea to geotag all your tweets: Your location tag reveals exactly where you are as you’re tweeting, and you probably don’t want that information available to everyone on the internet. And now that Twitter might sell your location data to advertisers, there’s more motivation to stop giving the company that information at all. Go to Settings > Privacy > Location on your iPhone and remove location access for Twitter. A similar settings page is also available on Android, but it varies slightly depending on your device. You can use the search feature in Android’s settings app to find the location permissions page and revoke Twitter’s access there.
Finally, you should remove all location data attached to older tweets as well. Go to Twitter’s location settings page and select Remove all location information attached to your Tweets and select Delete.
