Twitter & security

July 15th, 2009 Posted by Missie at 1:11 pm

As with any social networking website, twitter users can find their account popping up all over the web. With @replies and RT’s, a users twitter profile can easily be found in a Google search. Along with Google and other search engines picking up your twitter account, it means your personal information can easily be found and accessed, if your account isn’t private.

Depending on the level of security you wish to have and how easily your account and information can be found, there’s a few thing you can do to keep your twitter account information private and prevent it showing up in Google search. You can do several things including:

• change your real name
• change your user name
• protect your profile

But there is also the possibility works used in tweets may also be indexed and display in the search results. It’s just something to keep in mind. 

What to do when Google still finds you 

If you’ve changed all the settings including your real name, username and set your profile to private, all tweets posted before an account is chaged to private will still be indexed in a search engine including Twitter’s own search function. After your profile is set to private, no tweets will show up after you have set your profile to private. 

Keep in mind: Google and other search engines cache search results, which means that occasionally old information is still posted.  Although Twitter changes your settings immediately, these changes don’t erase old information in Google’s search index. Any/all old links appearing in a Google search thus lead to Twitter’s truth-telling error page: “That page doesn’t exist!” 

Nudge Google 

Although it may take some time, Google will index your update twitter information. But if the issue of security still concerns you, you can request removal of 

Google will eventually index updated Twitter information.  If you’d like it done sooner, notify them post-haste.  If you can click on a link in a Google search, and it takes you to a dead/error page, you can request removal of that link using the URL removal tool.  Here’s how:

1. Copy the URL you’d like removed from the site: http://twitter.com/yourusername……
2. Navigate to this page.
3. Paste in the Twitter link that you’d like removed
4. Submit your request.

You may be required to log in to your Google account.  If you don’t have one, you may need to create one.  More information about removing your content from Google’s search index is here.

Do you have any security tips to share? Comment below and let us know.