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How to backup Twitter

Twitter login screen on a smartphone - CC0 Public Domain

Why backup your tweets?

Mistakes happen. Either your own or the social network’s. That’s why backups are useful.

Mistakenly deleting your messages or your account is quite hard. But not impossible, especially if you’re using a third-party service to delete old tweets automatically. Mistakes do happen, as does hacking.

That also applies to Twitter, who might zap your account by mistake, such as if an anti-trolling purge goes wrong.

So although the odds are that you won’t ever need your backup… a major point of backups is to cover the rare and unexpected event. Backup, then, against that risk of a rare event sinking your Twitter campaigning.

How to backup your Twitter account

It’s pretty easy, as long as you know that the magic word to look for in Twitter’s menus is  ‘download’ rather than ‘backup’:

  • Login to Twitter;
  • In the menu go to Settings and Privacy (this may be behind the More option first, depending on how you’re accessing Twitter);
  • Then go to Account, followed by Data and permissions, and then Your Twitter data;
  • Pick the option Download your Twitter data, which will require your Twitter password; and
  • You will then be sent an email to the address on your account. This has a download link for the archive, which you can then store safely.

2 responses to “How to backup Twitter”

  1. Back up on twitter are not allowed since months ago (to me, at least). Are there other sofware to do the job?
    Thankyou very much

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