X Privacy Policy

Breaking down how we use the information we collect is not simple because of the way the systems that bring our services to you work. For example, the same piece of information may be used differently for different purposes to ultimately deliver a single service. We think it’s most useful to describe the five main ways we use information and if you have questions that are not answered, you can always contact us. Here we go:

2.1 Operate, improve, and personalize our services.

We use the information we collect to provide and operate X products and services. We also use the information we collect to improve and personalize our products and services so that you have a better experience on X, including by showing you more relevant content and ads, suggesting people and topics to follow, enabling and helping you discover affiliates, third-party apps, and services. We may use the information we collect and publicly available information to help train our machine learning or artificial intelligence models for the purposes outlined in this policy.

We may use the information we collect from accounts of other services that you choose to connect to your X account to provide you features like cross-posting or cross-service authentication, and to operate our services.

We use your contact information to help others find your account if your settings permit, including through third-party services and client applications.

We use your information to provide our advertising and sponsored content services subject to your settings, which helps make ads on X more relevant to you. We also use this information to measure the effectiveness of ads and to help recognize your devices to serve you ads on and off of X. Some of our ad partners also enable us to collect similar information directly from their website or app by integrating our advertising technology. Information shared by ad partners and affiliates or collected by X from the websites and apps of ad partners and affiliates may be combined with the other information you share with X and that X receives, generates, or infers about you, as described elsewhere in our Privacy Policy.

2.2  Foster safety and security.

We use information we collect to provide for the safety and security of our users, our products, services, and your account. This includes verifying your identity, authenticating your account, and defending against fraud, unauthorized use, and illegal activity. We also use the information to evaluate and affect the safety and quality of content on X - this includes investigating and enforcing our policies and and terms, as well as applicable law.

2.3 Measure, analyze and make our services better.

We use the information we collect to measure and analyze the effectiveness of our products and services and to better understand how you use them in order to make them better.

2.4 Communicate with you about our services.

We use the information we collect to communicate with you about our products and services, including about product updates and changes to our policies and terms. If you’re open to hearing from us, we may also send you marketing messages from time to time.

2.5 Research.

We use information you share with us, or that we collect to conduct research, surveys, product testing, and troubleshooting to help us operate and improve our products and services.

You should know the ways we share your information, why we share it, and how you can control it. There are five general ways we share your information.

3.1 When you post and share.

With the general public. You are directing us to disclose that information as broadly as possible. X content, including your profile information (e.g., name/pseudonym, username, profile pictures), is available for viewing by the general public. The public does not need to be signed in to view some content on X. They may also find X content off of X: for example, from search query results on Internet search engines or videos downloaded and reshared elsewhere (depending on your settings).

With other X users. Depending on your settings, and based on the X products and services you use, we share:

• Your interactions with X content of other users, such as replies, and people you follow.
• Content you send to a specific X user, such as through Direct Messages. Please keep in mind that if you’ve shared information like Direct Messages or protected posts with someone else who accesses X through a third-party service, the information may be shared with the third-party service.

With partners. Depending on your settings, we also provide certain third parties with information to help us offer or operate our products and services. You can learn more about these partnerships in our Help Center. You can control whether X shares your personal information with these partners by using the “Data sharing with business partners” option in your Privacy & Safety settings. (This setting does not control sharing described elsewhere in this Privacy Policy, such as when we share information with our service providers, or through partnerships other than as described in this Help Center article.)

3.2 With third parties & third-party integrations.

With service providers. We may share your information with our service providers that perform functions and provide services on our behalf, including payment services providers who facilitate payments; service providers that host our various blogs and wikis; service providers that help us understand the use of our services; applicant tracking system providers to send and receive applicant and job data to potential employers; and those that provide fraud detection services. 

With advertisers. Advertising revenue enables us to provide our products and services. Advertisers may learn information from your engagement with their ads on or off X. For example, if you click on an external link or ad on our services, that advertiser or website operator might figure out that you came from X, along with other information associated with the ad you clicked, such as characteristics of the audience it was intended to reach and other X-generated identifiers for that ad. They may also collect other personal information from you, such as cookie identifiers, or your IP address.

Third-party content & integrations. We share or disclose your information with your consent or at your direction, such as when you authorize a third-party web client or application to access your account or when you direct us to share your feedback with a business. Similarly, to improve your experience, we work with third-party partners to display their video content on X or to allow cross-platform sharing. When you watch or otherwise interact with content from our video or cross-platform sharing partners, they may receive and process your personal information as described in their privacy policies. For video content, you can adjust your autoplay settings if you prefer that content not to play automatically.

Third-party collaborators. Depending on your settings, or if you decide to share your data, we may share or disclose your information with third parties. If you do not opt out, in some instances the recipients of the information may use it for their own independent purposes in addition to those stated in X’s Privacy Policy, including, for example, to train their artificial intelligence models, whether generative or otherwise. 

Through our APIs. We use technology like APIs and embeds to make public X information available to websites, apps, and others for their use, for example, displaying posts on a news website or analyzing what people say on X. We generally make this content available in limited quantities for free and charge licensing fees for large-scale access. We have standard terms that govern how this information can be used, and a compliance program to enforce these terms. But these individuals and companies are not affiliated with X, and their offerings may not reflect updates you make on X. For more information about how we make public data on X available to the world, visit https://developer.x.com.

3.3 When required by law, to prevent harm, or in the public interest.

We may preserve, use, share, or disclose your information if we believe that it is reasonably necessary to:

• comply with a law, regulation, legal process, or governmental request;
• protect the safety of any person, protect the safety or integrity of our platform, including to help prevent spam, abuse, or malicious actors on our services;
• explain why we have removed content or accounts from our services (e.g., for a violation of our Rules);
• address fraud, security, or technical issues; or
• protect our rights or property, or the rights or property of those who use our services.

We may also use different signals and your data to infer, preserve, use, share, or disclose your age and identity information in order to comply with regulatory requirements as well as for safety, security, fraud, know-your-customer, know-your-business, and identity verification, as the case may be. We may also share or disclose your age and identity information with our partners, service providers, and others for these purposes.

3.4 With our Affiliates.

We may share information amongst our affiliates to provide our products and services.

3.5 As a result of a change in ownership.

We may share, sell, or transfer information about you in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization, sale of assets, or bankruptcy. This Privacy Policy will apply to your personal information that is shared with (before and after the close of any transaction) or transferred to the new entity.

We keep different types of information for different periods of time, depending on how long we need to retain it in order to provide you with our products and services, to comply with our legal requirements and for safety and security reasons. For example:

• We keep your profile information, such as your display name, user name, password and email address for the duration of your account. We cannot provide you with our products and services without retaining this information.
• We keep your usage information, such as the content you post, your interactions with other users’ content and how you interact with others on the platform for the duration of your account or until such content is removed.
• We keep your payment information, including your credit or debit card number and billing address for the duration you use our paid products and services. Records of transactions will be kept for longer, in accordance with applicable law.
• If you communicate with us, such as through email, we will keep information about the communication and its content for up to 18 months, unless it is necessary for us to retain it for a longer period to comply with our legal obligations or to exercise or defend our legal rights.
• We generally collect device information, location information, inferred identity information and log information using cookies. We keep cookies and information collected using cookies for up to 13 months. You can learn more about how we use cookies and similar technologies here.
• We keep information about your views or interactions with ads on or off X, as well as how you interact with our content on third-party sites for up to 90 days. 
• We keep information shared by ad and business partners for up to 90 days.
• Where you violate our Rules and your account is suspended, we may keep the identifiers you used to create the account (such as your email address or phone number) indefinitely to prevent repeat policy offenders from creating new accounts.

We may need to keep certain information longer than our policies specify in order to comply with legal requirements and for safety and security reasons. For example:

• To comply with a law, regulation, legal process or governmental request. Including in order to adhere to a legally appropriate preservation request made by law enforcement. You can read more about law enforcement access here.
• In connection with legal claims, litigation and regulatory matters. Including where it is reasonably necessary to retain information relating to your account in order to defend X against legal claims.
• To maintain the safety and security of our products and services. Including where it is necessary to store your information longer in order to investigate and fight abuse on our products and services.

Remember public content can exist elsewhere even after it is removed from X. For example, search engines and other third parties may retain copies of your posts longer, based upon their own privacy policies, even after they are deleted or expire on X. You can read more about search visibility here.

5.1 Access, Correction, Portability.

You can access, correct, or modify the information you provided to us by editing your profile and adjusting your account settings.

• You can learn more about the information we have collected or inferred about you in Your X Data and request access to additional information here.

• You can download a copy of your information, such as your posts, by following the instructions here.

To protect your privacy and maintain security, we take steps to verify your identity before granting you access to your personal information or complying with a deletion, portability, or other related request. We may, in certain situations, reject your request for access, correction, or portability, for example, we may reject access where you are unable to verify your identity.

5.2 Deleting your Information.

If you follow the instructions here, your account will be deactivated and your data will be queued for deletion. When deactivated, your X account, including your display name, username, and public profile, will no longer be viewable on X.com, X for iOS, and X for Android. For up to 30 days after deactivation it is still possible to restore your X account if it was accidentally or wrongfully deactivated.

5.3 Objecting to, Restricting, or Withdrawing your Consent.

You can manage your privacy settings and other account features here. If you change your settings it may take some time for your choices to be fully reflected throughout our systems. You may also notice changes in your X experience or limitations in your ability to access certain features depending on the settings you’ve adjusted. You may also manage additional settings when interacting with certain content and features on different parts of the platform, such as whether a Space is recorded, or whether videos you upload are downloadable by others.

5.4 Authorized Agent Requests.

To submit a request related to access, modification, or deletion of your information, or someone else’s information if you are their authorized agent, you may also contact us as specified in the How To Contact X section of our Privacy Policy below. We may require you to provide additional information for verification.

We provide X to people all over the world and provide many of the same privacy tools and controls to all of our users regardless of where they live. However, your experience may be slightly different than users in other countries to ensure X respects local requirements.

6.1 We have specific legal bases to use your information.

X has carefully considered the legal reasons it is permitted to collect, use, share and otherwise process your information. If you want to dig in to learn more and better understand the nuances, we’d encourage you to check out this additional information about data processing. And no, we don’t sell your personal information. 

6.2 We move your data to make X work for you.

Just as you use X to seamlessly participate in global conversations with people in countries all over the world, X must move information across borders and to different countries around the world to support the safe and reliable service you depend on. For example, if you live in Europe and are having a conversation with someone in the United States, information has to move between those countries to provide that experience – it’s what you expect from us.

We also use data centers and cloud providers, and engage our affiliates and third-party partners and service providers located in many parts of the world to help us provide our services. Before we move data between countries we look at the risks that may be presented to the data and rely on standard contractual clauses (SCCs), where applicable, to ensure your data rights are protected. To request a copy of the SCCs, please contact us here. If data will be shared with a third party, we require them to maintain the same protections over your data that we provide directly.

X is a participant in the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (DPF), the Swiss-US DPF and the UK Extension to the EU-US DPF. X complies with the DPF Principles for all its processing of personal data received from the European Union, Switzerland and the UK, in reliance on the EU-US DPF, Swiss-US DPF and UK Extension to the EU-US DPF, respectively. If you have an inquiry or complaint related to our participation in the DPF, please contact us here. As part of our participation in the DPF, if you have a dispute with us about our adherence to the DPF Principles, we will seek to resolve it through our internal complaint resolution process, alternatively through the US-based independent dispute resolution body JAMS, and under certain conditions, through the DPF Arbitration Process following the procedures and subject to the conditions described in Annex 1 to the DPF Principles. DPF participants are subject to the investigatory and enforcement powers of the US Federal Trade Commission and other authorized statutory bodies. Under certain circumstances, participants may be liable for the transfer of personal data from the EU, Switzerland and the UK to third parties outside the EU, Switzerland and the UK. Learn more about the EU-US DPF, the Swiss-US DPF and the UK Extension to the EU-US DPF here.

The most current version of this Privacy Policy governs our processing of your personal data and we may revise this Privacy Policy from time to time as needed.

If we do revise this Privacy Policy and make changes that are determined by us to be material, we will provide you notice and an opportunity to review the revised Privacy Policy before you continue to use X.

The X Privacy Policy is written in English but is made available in multiple languages through translations. X strives to make the translations as accurate as possible to the original English version. However, in case of any discrepancies or inconsistencies, the English language version of the X Privacy Policy shall take precedence. You acknowledge that English shall be the language of reference for interpreting and constructing the terms of the X Privacy Policy.