Foreign Twitter accounts now under EU data protection regulation

As of Saturday April 18, all Twitter users outside of the US are now protected under the EU Data Protection Regulation or Directive. This is an important move by Twitter and helps to provide some level of protection for non-US citizens. This directive includes the “right to be forgotten” clause so that users can request the removal of damaging information.

US Citizens will not fall under this ruling however, and will be governed according to US law and be handled out of Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters.

The EU has some of the best privacy laws in the world protecting individuals rights as to what information can be collected and stored. This latest move by Twitter provides a glimmer of hope that US tech companies are starting to value individuals privacy. The EU is also looking at bolstering its privacy protection through a new Data Protection Regulation which allows individual countries to deal with cross-border privacy issues which has proven to be very difficult in the past.