I go updated terms of service from twitter, the following caught my attention:
How does Twitter determine which devices are associated with my account or device?
When you log in to Twitter on a browser or device, we associate that browser or device with your Twitter account. Whether or not you are logged in to Twitter, we may also receive information about your browsers or 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 advertiserâs 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 browsers or devices are associated with one another or with your account. To learn more about the browsers or devices we use to measure and improve your experience, check out Your Twitter Data while logged in. To learn more about other browsers or devices we use to measure and improve your experience on the device or browser you are currently using, visit Your Twitter Data while logged out.
What does âPersonalization across devicesâ mean?
By better understanding how different browsers and devices are related, we can use information from one browser or device to help personalize the Twitter experience on another. For example, if you commonly use Twitter for Android around the same time and from the same network where you browse sports websites with embedded Tweets on a computer, we may infer that your Android device and laptop are related and later suggest sports-related Tweets and serve sports-related advertising on your Android device.
So, if I understand this correctly, all devices hanging from the same router at home will be understood to belong to the same person, since they share the same i.p. Therefore, if someone visits me and asks for the wifi password and that person does not have a twitter account, that personâs browsing will reflect on my twitter feed. If that person has, for example, particular sexual fetishes or looks for info on a desease he or she may have, I will suddenly get tweets on that subject. How great.
How would that help? Or are you suggesting that each person who connects to my router at home should use their own VPN so that they have a unique, private, personal I.P.?
Every time that you hit a 3rd party page that loads a Twitter icon from twitter.com, your browser is going to send the cookies in the image request. That will probably ID you, logged in or not, regardless of the IP.
The text say that they infer that a device is associated to your account from your ip. They donât need to infer that from your ip if you logged in and left a personalized cookie on that device.
The text clearly says that all unlogged devices from the same ip will normally be associated to the same person, which makes sense if they expect people to only use the app (on a phone, then) and want to follow them on the pc. I suppose that they would also not do that if there are multiple tweeter accounts in the same household.
I understand that other social networks do the same, but this was the official text from tweeter. I suspected that there was something of the kind, because the last time I visited my mother, I used her wifi and was surprised to see advertisements I was not used to.
I am pointing out that this is a privacy problem for anyone who gives access to friends on their home network.
