On Wednesday, Twitter announced some changes to its privacy settings. It’s no secret that Twitter uses non-public personal data of its users to personalise their Twitter experience.

However, in addition to that, Twitter has removed a privacy feature that allowed all users to stop sharing some private information with advertisers. For most users, that information will now be shared by default and can’t be turned off.

Twitter alerted users to the change with a pop-up when they opened the app.

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Why Is Twitter Sharing Your Data?

The company plans to use the data to show the efficiency of advertising on Twitter. The company says it helps them prove that people are actually watching and interacting with the ads that advertisers are paying for.

An option in Twitter’s privacy settings called “Share your data with Twitter’s business partners” used to let you disable sharing of this information. That setting still exists, but Twitter now says it has removed your control over “mobile app advertising measurements.”

Disabling the setting can still prevent sharing of other information, such as your interests. Other Twitter privacy settings, like disabling web tracking, are still available. Twitter will not share your name, email address, phone number, or username.

“Twitter shares certain non-public personal information with certain digital advertising platforms to help measure and optimise the effectiveness of our efforts to market Twitter on those platforms,” said the company.

A Twitter spokesperson says the update is part of their ongoing work around transparency and control.  They want to ensure that people understand the settings they provide and how to use them. Today’s change seems to simplify things by giving Twitter more control in the first place.