Tools

It’s important that you know how to manage your Twitter profile. Start with these steps:

• Protected Tweets: if you want to control who sees your updates, you may choose to protect your Tweets. Accounts with protected Tweets require manual approval of each and every person who wants to view that account’s Tweets. Only approved followers are able to view or search for Tweets from protected accounts. Learn how to protect your Tweets here.
• Photo Tagging: this feature allows others to tag you in photos on Twitter. Photo tagging is a great way to stay connected, but if you’d prefer a more private experience, you can easily change your photo tag settings. We provide three options: (1) allow anyone to tag you, (2) allow only followers to tag you, or (3) allow no one to tag you. Learn how to manage your photo tagging settings here.
• Would you like to be discovered? We allow your friends to find you on Twitter by using your email address or phone number. However, if you’d prefer not to be discovered, you can deactivate this feature by changing your settings.
• Location tips: your Tweet location is switched off by default, but some users enable location services because they want to add a location (such as a city or neighborhood) to their Tweets. This is up to you. Learn how to include or stop including your location in your Tweets here.
• Direct messages: these are private messages on Twitter. You can choose to receive Messages from anyone or just from those you follow. Visit your security and privacy settings page to change your preferences.

At times, you may encounter content you don’t want to see on Twitter. Here are few suggestions for what to do when this happens:

• Mute: Mute empowers you to tune out an account, a conversation, specific words, phrases, emojis, and hashtags. By muting an account, you can hide someone’s Tweets from your timeline without blocking or alerting them. You can also mute notifications for Tweets that contain certain words, phrases, or conversations. Return to your settings if you ever want to unmute an account, conversation, or word. Learn more about mute here.
• Block: Block prevents people from contacting you or seeing some of your content while logged in to Twitter. Block stops an account from following you, tagging you in photos, or accessing your Tweets. Using block can be an effective way to handle unwanted interactions from accounts you don’t want to engage with. Blocked accounts can see that you’ve blocked their accounts when they visit your profile.

  Any replies or mentions from an account you blocked won’t appear in your mentions tab (although these Tweets may still appear in search). However, if they choose to report your account, then any of your Tweets that directly @mention them will be available for them to view and attach during the reporting process. Learn more about block here.

• Control what you see in Tweets: your account settings include Tweet media options that let you place a warning over media in Tweets that may contain sensitive content. By default, Twitter will provide a warning, but you can change the setting at any time. Learn more about media settings here.

You can report accounts that are harassing, bullying, or threatening you or someone else, especially if block and mute don’t fix the issue. We’ll investigate and determine the appropriate response. If you feel you’re in immediate danger, please contact local law enforcement.

If you work with law enforcement, it’s important to:

• document the violent or abusive messages with printouts or screenshots.
• be as specific as possible about why you’re concerned.
• provide any context you have around who you believe might be involved, such as evidence of abusive behavior from other websites.
• provide any information regarding previous threats you may have received.