Twitter allows to engage with anyone in the world, but it has also become a dangerous place filled with harassment and abuse.
To help keep your account secure, we recommend the following best practices:
- Use a strong password that you don’t reuse on other websites.
- Use two-factor authentication.
- Require email and phone number to request a reset password link or code.
- Be cautious of suspicious links and always make sure you’re on twitter.com before you enter your login information.
- Never give your username and password out to third parties, especially those promising to get you followers, make you money, or verify you.
- Make sure your computer software, including your browser, is up-to-date with the most recent upgrades and anti-virus software.
- Do create a password at least 10 characters long. Longer is better.
- Do use a mix of uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and symbols.
- Do use a different password for each website you visit.
- Do keep your password in a safe place. Consider using password management software to store all of your login information securely.
- Phishing is when someone tries to trick you into giving up your Twitter username, email address or phone number and password, usually so they can send out spam from your account.
- Twitter will never ask you to sign into a non-Twitter website, provide your password via email, Direct Message, reply or download something. Never open an attachment or install any software from an email that claims to be from Twitter; it’s not.
- To minimise sharing your name to the public, you can disable a feature that allows anyone to tag you in a photo or limit tagging by only those you follow.
- If you don’t want a certain account to follow you, you can simply remove them from your list of followers without blocking them.
- The Hide Replies features allow you to control who gets visibility in your conversations. If you believe a reply is spammy and detracts from the conversation, you can click on the reply and hide it. It should be noted that replies are not deleted but placed behind an extra click.
- You can also choose to restrict certain accounts by blocking them. Accounts that you’ve blocked will not be able to contact you, see your Tweets, and/or follow you.
