TL;DR:I wish to manage multiple Twitter accounts on Flare, and what I want to know is if my privacy will be protected from Twitter if I do that. Specifically, what I want to know is if Twitter would be able to tell that the two Twitter accounts managed under Flare belong to the same person?
Thanks to the PG community, I recently discovered the FOSS third party Twitter client Flare, which allows you to have social feeds from multiple services (Twitter, BlueSky, Mastodon, etc..) in one app. This was a godsend to me in part because I have not been able to use Twitter on mobile since the beginning of the year after I changed my password.
My phone is not linked to any Google account, and I download all my apps via F-Droid and the Aurora Store. I don’t use the Google Play Store. However, some time ago Twitter updated their app so that you can only use it with a Google account.
I use a VPN 24/7, and I understand that both my Twitter accounts would have the same IP, but I would hope that since it’s with a third party client instead of the official Twitter app, Twitter would not be able to be sure they belong to the same person. Especially when you also consider that other Twitter users might have the same VPN IP.
Will my privacy be protected if I add a 2nd Twitter account to Flare?
My guess is that the accounts are likely to be connected since your IP is the same and the third party client accessing the platform is a big fingerprint factor.
it looks a nice app , thanks for sharing.
Regarding privacy , i agree with what user1 said above. I think there would be multiple identifying factors other than your ip.
Also depends on your threat model here.
Do you really care if twitter knows that you own the 2 accounts ? is it for protecting you from any politically sensitive stuff ? - if yes then twitter would probably know about it , unless you take very extreme route of different devices on different network , different timezone etc.
if not politically sensitive then i don’t think you should bother about them knowing or not.
The most they could do is serve you ads based on activity of another account.
If the threat is not from twitter directly but from public for example you want to make one pseudonymous account and another with official info , then it would just depend upon your activity like what , how and when you make posts.
i would say as far as twitter is allowing you to use a third party client , you are protected from lot more tracking than the official app .
Right now i think we all need a tool to protect ourself from the AI slop posts on twitter than from twitter itself .
Edit : i tried flare app , it won’t even login into twitter if i have vpn on. So i am skeptical if its really going to help with tracking protection.
i usually login into twitter using brave and it works for me. I think flare is just a wrapper too.
As I said in my post, I am hoping that the fact that I am using a VPN would mitigate that, since other Twitter users probably have the same VPN IP.
I did not consider that that third party app would have a fingerprint though.
Thanks for reinterating it. I guess it’s not a good idea.
Yes.
Yes.
Got it.
It’s both. My default Twitter account is linked to my real identity. I recently created a more private Twitter account that I want to make my default. The thing is, I don’t really want to manage both accounts in the same app or device. My original plan was to have a desktop only account and a mobile only Twitter account, and to retire the account linked to my identity.
However, the account linked to my identity has all the people I follow which is over 1000+. I also have lists. I want to follow the same accounts with my “anonymous” account. But as far as I know there is no easy way to follow all the same people another account is following in just one click. I also worry that if there is such a way, I would be linking my anonymous account and the one tied to my identity.
That is good to know.
As I explained, I haven’t been able to log into the official Twitter app since the beginning of the year ever since I changed my password. I didn’t try to log in without a VPN because that was out of the question. But based on research, I believe I can’t log in because my Android phone is not linked to any Google account, and I do not use the Google Play Store. I only use F-Droid and Aurora, and the Google Play Store is deliberately disabled.
When you log into Twitter via Flare, it is via web, it’s not via Twitter’s app. When I first tried logging in, it wouldn’t let me, but then I changed my VPN location, and it worked. With the official Twitter app, changing locations doesn’t make a difference.
That’s my uneducated guess on the matter too. Probably best to segregate the accounts with different browsers at a minimum. I would not underestimate X’s fingerprinting capabilities.
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