Our use of cookies and similar technologies

What are cookies, pixels, and local storage?

Cookies are small files placed on your computer as you browse the web or use a web-enabled app. Twitter services use cookies in a number of ways, including to operate our services, to discover how people are using our services, and to make them work better.

A pixel is a small amount of code , which can be placed on a web page, in a web-enabled app, or in an email. As many services do, Twitter and our advertisers 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 including the ads and content you see.

Local storage is used to store information locally on your computer or mobile device. Twitter services use local storage to turn on web navigation, maintain video player preferences, customize what we show you based on your past interactions with our services, remember your preferences, and to measure the ad effectiveness.

Why do our services use these technologies?

Twitter services use these technologies in a variety of ways to operate, support our business, and to help provide you with a better, faster, and safer experience. These uses generally fall into one of the following categories:

• Authentication and Security:
  
  
  • To log you into Twitter and services.
    
  • To help protect your security and the security of Twitter services.
  • To let you view content with limited distribution.
  • 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 Periscope and prevent unauthorized parties from accessing your account. They also let us show you appropriate content through our services.
    
    
• Functionality:
  
  
  • To deliver error messages, allow you to switch between accounts, and to help coordinate the service across tabs on a browser.
     

• Preferences:
  
  
  • To remember information about your browser and your preferences.
  • For example, cookies help us remember your preferred language or your country. We can then provide you with Twitter services in your preferred language without having to ask you each time you visit Twitter. On 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:
  
  
  • To help us improve and understand how people use Twitter services, including Twitter buttons and widgets.
  • To 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 or tap. We may use Google Analytics to assist us with this. Learn more about the cookies you may encounter through our use of Google Analytics.
  • To count the number of users that have seen a particular Tweet, embedded Tweets, buttons, or timeline. Learn more about the analytics cookies used by Twitter for Websites widgets.
     
• Research and Development:
  
  
  • To gather data about the use of Twitter services, including how Twitter services perform. This helps us to detect issues, understand where we may improve, or develop new products or services.
  • To test updates to Twitter services, as well as build new features, functionality, services. For example, cookies help us test different versions of our services to see which particular features or content users prefer. 
     
• Personalized content:
  
  
  • To customize Twitter 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 visits to websites that have integrated Twitter services.
     
• 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 these technologies to personalize 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.
  • We also work with third-party advertising partners, including Google, to market our services and serve ads on behalf of our advertisers, including through the delivery of interest-based ads.
    
    
• Marketing:
  
  
  • We use cookies in emails and on the web, including those of third party providers, to deliver our marketing campaigns and understand the effectiveness of our own marketing efforts. 
     
• Personalization across devices:
  
  
  • By better understanding how devices are related, we can use information from one device to help personalize the Twitter experience on another device.
  • When you log in to Twitter on a device, we associate that device with your Twitter account. Whether or not you are logged in to Twitter, we may also receive information about your devices when, for example, that information is shared by a partner; you visit Twitter.com; you visit third-party websites that integrate Twitter content; or you visit a Twitter advertiser’s website or mobile application. We may use this information, most commonly IP addresses and the time at which the information was received, to infer that certain devices are associated with one another, including the devices on which you log in to Twitter. To learn more about the devices associated with your account, check out Your Twitter Data while logged in. To learn more about the other devices associated with the device or browser you are currently using, visit Your Twitter Data while logged out.
    

Where are these technologies used?

We (along with third parties) use these technologies on Twitter services, which includes our websites, applications, and services and on other websites, applications, and services that have integrated Twitter services, including third-party properties that incorporate our advertising technology. This includes our ad partners’ websites and sites that use our embeds, including embedded timelines. Third parties may also use these technologies, for example, when you click on links from our websites or applications, view or interact with third-party content from within our services, or visit third-party websites that incorporate our advertising technology.

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 we, our partners, and other third parties use cookies and cookie-related data:

• To control whether Twitter stores information about other websites where you’ve seen Twitter content, adjust the Allow use of where you see Twitter content across the web setting in your Off-Twitter activity settings, which you can view under the Privacy and safety tab of your account. If you have this setting turned off or are in the European Union or EFTA States, Twitter will not store or use such web page visits to improve your experience in the future. If we’ve previously stored your web browsing history, your experience may continue to be personalized based on information already inferred from that history.
• If you do not want Twitter to show you interest-based ads on and off of Twitter, there are several ways to turn off this feature:
  
  
  • Adjust the Personalized ads setting in your Ads preferences, which you can view under your Data sharing and off-Twitter activity tab in the Privacy and safety tab of your account. 
  • If you are on the web, you can visit the Digital Advertising Alliance’s consumer choice tool at optout.aboutads.info to opt out of seeing interest-based advertising from Twitter in your current browser.
  • On iOS version 13 and earlier only, if you do not want Twitter to show you interest-based ads in Twitter for iOS on your current mobile device, turn on the Limit Ad Tracking setting in your iOS phone’s settings (precise directions may be different on different iOS versions). 
  • On Android, if you do not want Twitter to show you interest-based ads in Twitter for Android on your current mobile device, turn on Opt out of Ads Personalization in your Android phone’s settings (precise directions and name of the setting may be different on different Android versions and OEM Android variants). 
  • On iOS version 14 and later only, if you do not want Twitter to access your iOS Identifier for Advertising, turn off the Allow Apps to Request to Track setting in your iOS settings (precise directions may be different on different iOS versions). 
  • To control personalization across devices on Twitter, adjust the Personalize based on your inferred identity setting in your Off-Twitter activity, which you can view under the Privacy and safety tab of your account. This will control whether we link your account to browsers or devices other than the ones you use to log into Twitter (or if you’re logged out, whether we link the browser or device you’re currently using to any other browsers or devices).
    
  • To control interest-based advertising from certain third-party advertising partners, you can learn more about opting out of receiving interest-based ads at optout.aboutads.info and www.networkadvertising.org/choices. If you are on the web, you can also opt out of Google Analytics by installing Google’s opt-out browser add-on, and opt out of interest-based Google ads using Google’s Ads Settings.
  • You can modify your settings in most web browsers to adjust settings for  cookies or to request your permission each time a site attempts to set a cookie. Twitter services may not work properly if you turn off cookies entirely. For example, you cannot log into twitter.com if you've turned off all cookie use.

Note: Please confirm that you are logged in if you want to view or change the web settings for your Twitter account. Changing your Twitter settings in your web browser when you are logged out will only affect behavior on that browser while you are not logged in to Twitter. Learn more about how to access your Personalization and data settings, including in your Twitter mobile app.