Twitter updating features to combat impersonation and private information sharing

27 Feb 2015

Twitter is rolling out new safety features to help tackle impersonation, self-harm and the ‘sharing of private and confidential information’.

The updates are the latest safety-focused additions the social network has announced following an overhaul of how it processes user reports.

According to Twitter, the number of staff dedicated to handling abuse cases has recently tripled. 

“These investments in tools and people allow us to handle more reports of abuse with greater efficiency,” wrote Twitter vice-president of user services Tina Bhatnagar in a blog post.

“So while we review many more reports than ever before, we’ve been able to significantly reduce the average response time to a fraction of what it was, and we see this number continuing to drop.”

Bhatnagar wrote that the latest updates will give Twitter additional options against users who don’t follow the rules which, in turn, will discourage abuse and other behaviour that goes against policies.

While Twitter has not been specific about these updates, according to Ars Techinca sources, one of the new features will be a ‘contact-information verification system’ that asks users who are warned or temporarily banned for their conduct to provide either an e-mail address or phone number to return to the site.

Earlier this month, Twitter teamed up with Irish youth information website SpunOut.ie to launch an Online Safety Hub to help ensure young people have a positive and safe online experience.

Located at Twitter’s Dublin headquarters, the Online Safety Hub aims to arm young people with what they need to navigate the online world with confidence through a set of short, easy guides to online safety, privacy and security for the most-used social, dating and gaming apps, sites and consoles.

Internet security image via Shutterstock

Dean Van Nguyen was a contributor to Silicon Republic

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