Twitter privacy settings: who can find you, message you and see where you post

Most people treat Twitter privacy as a single switch, Protect your posts.

That lock decides who reads your posts, and it changes nothing about who can look you up by email or phone number, or who can send you a message request.

Change your Twitter privacy settings in Settings and privacy, then Privacy and safety.On x.com, open More in the left-hand menu and pick Settings and privacy.In the X app, tap your profile photo or the menu icon, then Settings and privacy.Open Privacy and safety and choose the section for what you want to control.

The rest of this guide sorts those sections by the question each one answers: who sees your posts, who can find you, who can reach you, where you posted from and what X does with your data.

How to open Twitter privacy settings on the web or in the app

The route is four moves on any device:

1. Open the menu that holds Settings and privacy: More in the side navigation on x.com, or your profile picture in the top bar of the X app (some versions show a menu icon instead).
2. Select Settings and privacy.
3. Choose Privacy and safety.
4. Open a section and change the setting. Checkbox settings such as discoverability save on their own.

The privacy settings page takes a few more taps than the menu on a single post, and it's worth them. The page sets your defaults for everything that happens next, while a post's menu only acts on that one post or account.

Who can see your posts and tag you on Twitter

Audience and tagging holds the two Twitter privacy settings that decide who sees your posts and who can put your name on a photo. Protect your posts shows your posts only to your followers and turns every new follow into a request you approve.

One detail is easy to miss: photos in protected posts don't show up in X's search results, so going private also takes your pictures out of search.

For photo tags, the choices are:

• Off
• Anyone can tag you
• Only people you follow can tag you

X's help center says the switch can need up to half an hour to kick in, so a tag that lands right after you turn it off isn't necessarily a glitch.

Who can find your X account by email or phone number

Discoverability and contacts decides whether knowing your email address or phone number is enough for someone to find you on X.

On x.com the two checkboxes read Let people who have your email address find you on X and Let people who have your phone number find you on X. The app shortens them to Let others find you by your email and Let others find you by your phone.

The switches matter most when someone uploads their address book. If your number is in it, your account can come up for them as a suggestion to follow.

According to X's discoverability page, switching both options off also means X won't use an address book you uploaded to recommend your account to other people.

Neither option ever puts your email address or phone number on your profile. Both stay private whichever way you set them; the privacy settings on X only decide whether they work as a way to look you up.

Who can message or call you on X

Direct Messages is where you decide whether strangers can reach your inbox. People you follow can message you either way.

For everyone else, X offers two opt-ins, one that allows message requests from anyone and one that allows them from verified accounts. Leave both off, and only people you follow or have messaged before can start a conversation.

Requests from people you don't follow wait in a separate Requests area, and the sender can't tell you've read one until you accept it.

X's Direct Messages page adds that its apps filter lower-quality requests out of view by default. In X's newer Chat system, Grok sorts requests into Priority and Hidden.

X's own privacy guide illustrates why that sorting exists with a familiar mix: a friendly hello, then "awesome deal $$$$ inside!", then a line of plain spam.

Show read receipts lives in the Direct Messages section too, and it starts switched on.

Turn it off and people stop seeing when you've read their messages, but you also stop seeing when they've read yours.

Calls, and the IP address they can reveal

X also lets people call you from a conversation, and those controls live in your messages rather than with your other privacy settings.

Open your messages and tap the settings icon to decide whether calls are allowed and who can place them:

• people in your address book
• people you follow
• verified users
• everyone

By default, X lets calls through from accounts you follow and from people in an address book you've shared with X.

The setting worth switching on there is Enhanced call privacy, which X leaves off by default. With it off on both sides, a call runs directly between the two devices once X sets it up, so each person's IP address may be visible to the other.

Turn it on and X relays the call through its own servers and masks your IP address, as X's calls help page explains. The other person doesn't need to do anything for your address to be hidden.

Where your posts on X show your location

Location on posts is off until you opt in, and it works in two layers. Your phone's location permission and the precise location setting inside the X app let X use your GPS position; once both are on, you can tag a post with a place such as a city or neighborhood.

Two behaviors catch people out, and X's answers on posting with your location describe both.

The first: after you post once with a location, X adds a general location label to your next post from that device automatically.

The second: when you attach a photo or video taken with X's in-app camera and tag your precise location, the post carries your exact coordinates. Those can be more specific than the label you picked, and they can be found through X's API.

To stop the carry-over, tap the location icon in the composer and remove the highlighted location with the X in the top corner. X then leaves location off your posts until you choose to add one again.

On x.com the Location information settings add a separate option that deletes location from all your past posts.

What X does with your data, and the switches that limit it

The last part of your X privacy settings covers data rather than people. Its switches do something narrower than their names suggest, so it pays to know the limits before you rely on them.

Personalized ads and partner sharing

Turning off Personalized ads, in Ads preferences, stops X from combining your activity with data from its ad partners to choose your ads.

It doesn't remove ads: X says you may still see ads based on what you gave at signup and what you do on X, such as who you follow, the links you click and where you are.

A separate switch, Allow additional information sharing with business partners, decides whether X passes identifiers such as your IP address and mobile advertising ID to ad platforms like Google. X's own list of those partnerships says the shared data never includes your name, email, phone number or username.

Grok and AI training

Under Grok & Third-party Collaborators you'll find two separate switches. One lets X use your public posts, your profile and your Grok conversations to train xAI's models; the other lets X personalize Grok for you.

Switching off training has two limits worth knowing. Features X runs on Grok, such as recommendations, still learn as you use them, and a thumbs up or down you give Grok can still end up in training.

Protecting your posts is the other route. X's page about Grok says protected posts aren't used to train Grok or surfaced in its answers to other people.

Is muting or blocking a privacy setting on X?

Partly. Mute and block sits inside Privacy and safety, but muting only changes what you see, while blocking changes what another account can do.

A muted account never finds out. You stop seeing its posts in your timeline, although its messages still reach you, and so do its mentions if you follow it.

A block stops an account from following you, messaging you, engaging with your posts and tagging you in photos, and the account can tell if it visits your profile.

Neither one hides your public posts from that person; only protecting your posts does that.

Will tighter X privacy settings cost you reach?

A common hesitation is reach: lock the account down, and nobody finds your posts.

Only one setting on the page decides who can read you, and that's Protect your posts.

Turning off discoverability removes one route to your profile, contact matching. The controls for messages, calls, location and data don't change who sees what you post.

So a public account can still close the doors that matter:

• email and phone discoverability switched off
• message requests limited to people you follow
• Enhanced call privacy switched on
• location left off your posts
• Grok training switched off, if you'd rather it didn't learn from your posts

Your posts stay public, while your phone number, inbox and location stop being open doors.

Start with the two switches that leave your reach untouched, Enhanced call privacy and message requests, then work down your Twitter privacy settings one section at a time.

X privacy settings questions: country labels, logged-out changes and chats

Can you hide which country your X account is based in?

Not completely, but you can blur it. X shows the country or region an account is based in on its About this account panel, inferred from IP addresses.

To show just your region instead, open your profile, click your Joined date and then the settings gear.

Do privacy changes you make while logged out apply to your account?

No. X lets you change its personalization and ad settings without logging in, but those changes only affect that browser while you stay logged out. Sign in and change them there to cover your account on every device.

Are your messages on X encrypted?

Yes, once both people have registered for X's Chat: the messages, links, media and reactions in that conversation are encrypted. The details around them, such as who you messaged and when, aren't, and X keeps a record when posts are shared in a chat.

Can you delete what you've told Grok on X?

Yes. The Grok settings in the data sharing part of Privacy and safety include Delete Conversation History, which removes all your Grok conversations at once. X says they leave its systems within 30 days unless it has to keep them for security or legal reasons.