Twitter Tries Being More Like Facebook ⇥ theverge.com

Makena Kelly, the Verge:

On Tuesday, Twitter announced that it “unintentionally” used phone numbers and email addresses for advertising purposes even though the information was provided by users for two-factor authentication.

According to Twitter, no personal data was shared with the company’s third-party partners, and the “issue that allowed this to occur” has been addressed. As of September 17th, phone numbers and email addresses are now only collected for security purposes, Twitter said.

Facebook acknowledged a similar issue earlier this year. Conveniently, I only need to swap company names in response:

This isn’t just yet another example of [Twitter] behaving outrageously when it comes to the company’s pathological need to slurp up everything about its users’ every living moment. It also has the potential to reduce the likelihood that users will adopt two-factor authentication. Technically-literate people have been preaching two-factor authentication for a long time, but average users have been slow to enable it; if they get the impression that it’s yet another piece of data that creepy companies can use to track them, they will be even more hesitant.

I’m starting to think that business models based on a relentless hoarding of personal details may need to be reconsidered.