## 1 Introduction
### The Privacy Debate  
In 2011 a number of high profile Twitter accounts were taken over by hackers and used to spread false information. This resulted in calls for Twitter to improve their security by making HTTPS standard for all users [12]. In response, Twitter announced that it was the user's responsibility to secure their own passwords and to manually select the HTTPS setting themselves. In May 2014, Twitter announced that it was improving the security of the password reset function. By providing a username, email or phone number, instructions can be sent out to the user to reset their password [13]. They also added a login history so that they could identify false login attempts, for example if the user appears to be on the other side of the world trying to log in. This is still not as secure as many would like [13]. Just how much online privacy protection should be provided by the sites themselves? It is the personal responsibility of the user to monitor what information is uploaded and shown. The ease of use goal of all social networking sites can overshadow their goals for privacy and security for the users [14]. There is a risk that users are unaware of this, as many prefer a social networking site that is easy to use and it is this naivety that enables personal information leakage to occur. Twitter has an extensive privacy policy that a new user must agree to. At the time that this work was completed the policy clearly stated that all user profiles and subsequent tweets were by default public. Within the policy Twitter details how your information is used through their services like applications, websites and third parties. The use of many services enable Twitter to \"collect, transfer, manipulate, store and disclose\" [15] the information provided by their users. Any information provided can be used by Twitter or third party services to help identify users and it is the privacy settings that allows users to select how and if their information is used. Users have the option to include location information with their tweets which will be stored to provide \"features\" for services. Having location information in tweets allows the services of Twitter to customize and improve by providing the user with a \"more relevant content like local trends, stories, ads and suggestions for people to follow\" [15]. Hidden away in the location support page are details about how to use this setting effectively to get the best results. It also raises a caution to all users to be careful about the information they share and to keep locations such as home addresses private by not tagging them using the location setting [7]. There is a risk that the majority of users do not read this. Most social networking sites, including Twitter, use the opt out approach for many of their features which means that once someone is signed up, it is their responsibility to check the settings if they wish to protect their privacy, as a number are on by default. Using this approach it would be expected that these sites would use the opt-in approach and allow users to willingly and knowingly turn them on, so that they can acknowledge they might encounter a lack of privacy as a result [14]. Many people would assume this would apply to their online profiles as well but only half of social media users utilize the security settings and make their profile private [16]. Unfortunately, most of the information is made visible to the public by default which opens the door to identity theft and cyber stalking. On the other hand, users making an update of their whereabouts or posting any sensitive personal data provide opportunities for criminals. For example, when someone posts \"out for dinner\", \"home sweet home\", \"at gram's\", \"away for the summer\", \"will be on the next flight to Paris\", or \"just got admitted to St. Paul's hospital\" they have given away significant information to criminals such as burglars and stalkers.