By Click&Clean - Monday, January 7, 2019 - Updated: January 10, 2023. As you know, during 2018-2023 there where plenty of serious privacy and security breaches, such as the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal, Google+ personal data leaks, etc.
Improve Your Search ExperiencePlease check if this page presentTwitter was no exception. At the beginning of November 2018, a bug was detected in Twitter OAuth API that left direct messages exposed to third-party apps without the user's knowledge.
Third-party apps and sites can be great, but they might make your account less secure. It's very convenient to sign in to everything using a simple "Sign in with Twitter" option, but this can create security problems if those apps or sites have full access to your Twitter account.
We have already described how to improve the security and privacy of your Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and LinkedIn accounts. Now it's time to give you helpful information on how to increase your Twitter account security by removing access to possible unwanted, third-party applications.
1. Log into your Twitter account, if you're not logged in already.
2. Click the button below to go directly to your Twitter "Connected apps" section.
3. In the "Connected apps" section, you will see third-party apps, online services, and websites, which you have authorized to use your Twitter account private data.
4. Click on an app's name to see what permissions that app has.
• Read only: apps with read permission can view your profile information, such as your name, location, your Tweets, your account preferred language, time zone, and also can see who you follow, mute, or block.
• Read and write: apps with this permission can access to all of the "Read only" permission level, but also have the ability to manage your account settings, post Tweets and media, like, un-like, or reply to a Tweet, follow or unfollow accounts for you, manage your collections and Lists.
• Read, write and access Direct Messages: apps with this permission can access to all of the "Read only" and "Read and write" permission levels, and also have the ability to view, manage and delete Direct Messages for you.
5. Go down the list, and if you see some app you don't remember authorizing; or you have any doubt as to whether an app is legit or not; or you're not using any of them anymore; or an app has full access and control of your private data on Twitter; click the "Revoke access" at the bottom of the app page.
Periodically go through your access permissions on Twitter and remove untrusted third-party apps or the ones you won't be needing anymore. This is a good security and privacy practice to protect your private data on Twitter. You must zealously guard access to your online accounts!