Maybe more than than any other social network, Twitter goes beyond family and friends to connect you with a global audience—not unlike a town square for the whole world to come together. You might find yourself retweeted in countries you’ve never heard of, or receive direct messages from people on the other side of the planet.
This is how Twitter is set up to work by default, and there are many benefits to this openness. However, if you prefer to have a more limited, private experience on Twitter, the platform provides many tools to limit who can find you, who can see your tweets, and who can contact you.
We’ll show you how to find these options through Twitter’s web interface, although you can also find the same settings through Twitter’s mobile apps.
Public or protected
Your Twitter account can generally be public or protected (private). If it’s public, anyone can see your profile and your tweets, even if they don’t have a Twitter account. Other Twitter users are free to follow you, reply to your tweets, and retweet them.
Choose a secure Twitter experience and only your followers will be able to see your tweets – and those followers must be specifically approved by you. You can read more about public and protected tweets here.
To change your account setting, open Twitter on the web and click the three dots in the left navigation panel, then Settings and privacy, Your account, Account informationand Protected tweets.
Open or close your DMs
Direct messages (DMs) are how people connect with you directly on Twitter. They work regardless of whether your account is secure, and by default anyone who follows you can DM you.
This also means that anyone you follow can message you. To allow any Twitter user to send you messages, go to the web settings page, then click Privacy and security and Direct messages and check Allow message requests from everyone box. You can read more about this setting here.
Even if this option is enabled, you must still accept the message request from anyone you don’t follow in order to reply. You can see your messages and your message requests here on the web.
