Twitter recently made a change in how it allows people to find you when they are attempting to add friends. They can search by phone number or email address, as shown in the screenshot here:
The problem is, this is only seen when you log in via the web interface. For new users, this is a common occurrence. For power users and more, there are a slew of mobile and desktop clients in use that will never show this change.
How many of you use the phone number that might be known or an email address commonly known? Most of you do and would say that it shouldn’t make a difference in any case. But that shouldn’t be true.
I should have to opt in to have this information shared and the boxes themselves should not be checked automatically when I log in. The default setting should be to disallow this type of search with explanation of what enabling these could expose.
The second portion was the ability to leave the selection to later. Are these email addresses and phone numbers being exposed anywhere outside of the ability to find and add friends? I didn’t see anything in the online help system for Twitter and only a few scattered articles.
Either way, get in there and establish your settings by logging in via the web interface.