San Francisco — Twitter Inc., the micro-blogging service, is bolstering its privacy settings on Tuesday announced on its blog that it has added tools that give users more control over how data is accessed with third-party applications.
The initiative the company described as “Mission: Permission” focused around two main areas of app permissions. The first one entitles users more control over the privacy options for letting outside software makers read posts and update profiles, Twitter said on its blog. Apps that have access to your direct messages will need to verify previously granted permissions. Also, applications that does not require that information will no longer have access by the end of the month.
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“Beginning today, we are granting you more control over what information you share with third-party applications,” Twitter’s Jodi Olson wrote in a blog post. “Apps that you use to access your direct messages will ask for your permission again. By the end of the month, applications that do not need access to your direct messages will no longer have it, and you can continue to use these apps as usual.”
“We are releasing an update to help you make more informed choices about the way third-party apps integrate with your Twitter account,” San Francisco-based Twitter said its blog.
However, not everyone is thrilled about Twitter’s changes, including John Gruber at Daring Fireball, who states that another announcement on Twitter’s API forum will make all third-party apps use OAuth for authentication.
“We have been formulating these changes in response to requests from users and developers who asked for a greater level of clarity and control.” “When you first connect an application to Twitter, we will give you more detailed information about what you are allowing the app to do with your account,” says Olson.
Olson added: “These activities may involve reading your Tweets, seeing who you follow, updating your profile, posting Tweets on your behalf, or accessing your direct messages. If you are not content with the level of access an application requests, simply say ‘No, thanks’.”
According to Guber, currently, a large number of these apps utilize xAuth, an authentication procedure that merely asks the users for their username and password within the application and only needs to store a key. With OAuth, user will be taken to an outside web browser for verification and then be returned — something that Gruber thinks makes for a confusing and bad user experience.
Also, Twitter recently modified its policy, placing a moratorium on third-party apps. Thus, apps that integrate Twitter into their services, like Foursquare, Yelp, or Instagram are still allowed to do so, but Twitter no longer lets companies create their own clients for the service.
A comprehensive analysis by Gruber suggests why Twitter may be making this change. The added layer of intricacy may discourage people from using these third-party apps. Conveniently, Twitter’s own applications would not make users go through the OAuth process, which may give them a slight edge on the competition.
Moreover, Twitter is bolstering its privacy controls as technology companies come under growing scrutiny about how they get users’ data or enable others to do so. The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing tomorrow with Twitter rival Facebook Inc., along with Apple Inc. and Google Inc., to answer questions about data collection and usage on mobile devices.
Nevertheless, moving forward, this could be an important step, too, considering Twitter’s ever-increasing growth. Although Twitter officially maintains that there are more than 200 million registered accounts on the site, tweet-watching site Twopchart reported Wednesday that Twitter has surpassed 300 million users.