This article was published on October 1, 2012

Twitter has automatically opted you into more email notifications; here’s how to reduce the spam


Twitter has automatically opted you into more email notifications; here’s how to reduce the spam

Sometime last month, I noticed I started getting more emails from Twitter. Since I can’t stand getting emails from social networking sites, and it’s the start of a new month, I finally looked into it today. Unsurprisingly, there’s a bunch of new options that I, and I’m sure many others, really don’t care about.

To unsubscribe from all the Twitter spam, head over to twitter.com/settings/notifications (you have to be logged in to see the page). Uncheck anything you don’t want to get email notifications for, and then hit the blue “Save changes” button. Alternatively, if you want to get notified for some of the options, keep them checked (or re-check them).

Twitter has added a few new options and checked them automatically, much like Facebook and other services do when they add new types of email notifications (or change existing ones). In the early days, Twitter had just four types of email notifications. The service now has triple that number.

A quick informal survey with The Next Web employees gives an idea of what’s new. While we had varying settings for the first two sections, it was pretty clear the “Updates from Twitter” had received more options, most of which were checked:

  • News about Twitter product and feature updates (unchecked for most)
  • Tips on getting more out of Twitter (checked)
  • Things I missed since I last logged into Twitter (checked)
  • News about Twitter on partner products and other third party services (checked)
  • Participation in Twitter research surveys (checked)
  • Suggestions about people I may know on Twitter (checked)

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Twitter should really distance itself from Facebook and send just one email notifying its users of such changes. It’s always unpleasant to find out a service has taken the liberty to make changes to your settings for you.

See also: Clean up your email settings for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube & more in one go, with Notification Control

Image credit: Alexander Sperl

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