Twitter, aside from its capability given to its users to talk to others through public tweets, also has a "Direct Message" feature, where two or more people can talk privately, without anyone seeing it. The feature also saw an update a few, lifting the regular 140 character in messages, expanding it to 10,000. However, it is now also the subject of a lawsuit, which is implying that direct messages aren't really private.
Wilford Raney not too long ago, has filed a case in a court in San Francisco, California, accusing Twitter of "surreptitiously eavesdropping" on the users of its Direct Messages feature by using its algorithms, and even apparently benefiting from it.
The lawsuit finds the root of the issue on a situation where a user writes a direct message containing a hyperlink. As the accusation says, using the link www.nytimes.com as an example, Twitter's algorithms will analyze the message, read through the link, then replace it with its own custom link, which is at https://t.co/CL2SKBxr1s. However, the link is still displayed to the user as the original. With this in consideration, whenever people click on links on Twitter, they have to go through Twitter's own servers before actually reaching the destination website.
It should also be noted that Twitter also uses this feature on public tweets containing hyperlinks, using its shortener https://t.co. In its privacy policy, Twitter admits that it may keep track of how users interact with links. Giving a reason for this, Twitter says that it can help provide more relevant advertising, and collect click statistics.
This is also what the lawsuit is implying, that the company benefits from replacing hyperlinks with its custom URLs, as this gives more personal data for advertisers. Elaborating further:
For instance, Twitter increases its perceived value to third-party websites and would be advertisers. That is, in the example given, the New York Times would identify Twitter as the source of internet traffic, where as without replacing the link the source would be anonymous. The end result is that Twitter can negotiate better advertising rates.
Finally, the suit asks for Twitter to stop reading, intercepting, and altering content of Direct messages without users' consent. It is also seeking compensation and statutory damages under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of the United States, as well as the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA).
Back in 2014, a related lawsuit was filed on Facebook, as the social networking site was seen collecting its users' data for advertisers' use.
Source: Mashable
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