Twitter’s use of cookies and similar technologies

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 let you to 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 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 the 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. We might also use cookies to count the number of users that have seen a particular embedded Tweet or timeline. Learn more about the analytics cookies used by Twitter for Websites widgets.

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 visits to websites that have integrated Twitter embeds, including embedded timelines.

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, Twitter uses cookies and pixels 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.

Twitter also works with its affiliate TellApart and third-party advertising partners, including Google, to market Twitter’s services and serve ads on behalf of Twitter advertisers, including through the delivery of interest-based ads.

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?

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

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.

To control whether Twitter stores information about other websites where you’ve seen Twitter content, adjust the Track where you see Twitter content across the web setting in your Personalization and data settings. If you have this setting disabled or are in the European Economic Area or Switzerland, 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:

Using your Twitter settings, visit the Personalization and data settings and adjust the setting Personalize ads.
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 your mobile device, enable the “Limit Ad Tracking” setting in your iOS phone’s settings, or the setting to “Opt out of Ads Personalization” in your Android phone’s settings.

To control personalization across devices, visit your Personalization and data settings and adjust the Personalize across all your devices setting. 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 TellApart and 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 and from TellApart’s FAQs. 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.
To control cookies, you can modify your settings in most web browsers to accept or deny 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.