While most of us were hurrying to turn off Twitter's new email digests, the company announced they would begin suggesting new people and brands to follow based on your Twitter activity. The trouble is, by "activity," they mean your friends, followers, and even where you go on the web once you leave Twitter.

What Is Twitter Doing?

You may already know that just about everyone is tracking you on the web, but at least you have ways to protect yourself. Twitter's new suggestion system would be fine if it stopped with the people you follow on the site and the other users who follow you, but blogger Dustin Curtis noticed that it doesn't stop there—Twitter also uses cookies dropped on your system to keep an eye on where you go on the web. As long as there's a "tweet this" or "follow me" button on the site, Twitter harvests information on where you are. Curtis explains:

Basically, every time you visit a site that has a follow button, a "tweet this" button, or a hovercard, Twitter is recording your behavior. It is transparently watching your movements and storing them somewhere for later use. Right now, that data will make better suggestions for accounts you might want to follow. But what other things can it be used for? The privacy implications of such behavior by a company so large are sweeping and absolute.

If tracking your behavior transparently is acceptable in the pursuit of a better user experience, why isn't it also acceptable in the pursuit of monetization? Is it okay for Twitter to sell your web browsing history to advertisers? The company is playing with a very slippery slope.

Essentially, remember what Facebook was doing a few months ago? Twitter is doing something similar. For the time being, Twitter is only using the information for its own purposes. It's not a stretch to think that if Twitter uses the data to suggest new brands and accounts to you, they'll use the same data to sell more promoted tweets to advertisers, or worse. Whether or not the data will be used for marketing or money-making purposes later is up in the air.

What Can I Do About It?

If the notion of Twitter keeping an eye on your browsing behavior after you've left their site feels a little intrusive, it's easily blocked with the right privacy tools:

• Twitter Disconnect stops Twitter from dropping those cookies on your system when you visit sites with "tweet" or "follow" buttons. You'll still be logged in to Twitter, and if you do want to tweet an article or follow an author, you can click the button to interact with Twitter, but no cookies will be downloaded to your computer until you click.
• Disconnect for Firefox and Chrome is from the same developer as Twitter Disconnect, but goes further. The full extension blocks Twitter, Facebook, and Google from tracking your activities by blocking the cookies they try to drop on your computer when you visit a site with a tweet button, follow box, or +1 button.
• Ghostery for Firefox and Chrome, an extension we've mentioned before, gives you complete control over the scripts and cookies that run when you visit any site. You'll be able to see which sites are dropping cookies or running scripts that call home right in your browser, and choose to block or allow any of them you choose.
• Priv3 for Firefox is lightweight and runs in the background quietly, blocking third party cookies until you interact with a social button or box.
• Do Not Track Plus for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and IE does much of what Ghostery does—it alerts you when a page attempts to send data to another site or company when you visit, blocks the transmission, and gives you the option to unblock it if you choose.

All of these tools do similar things: they give you control over the data that the sites you visit collect and share about you.

In Twitter's defense, the company has a privacy-positive reputation. They've implimented Do Not Track, and promised to obey any browsers or clients that support it. Twitter representatives responded directly to Curtis, saying they'll will never sell your data to anyone, and data they obtain from your activities on other web sites will be deleted after no more than 10 days. Curtis rebuts that this response, and Twitter's commitment to Do Not Track is a PR distraction from the issue at hand: that their tracking—like everyone else's on the web—is opt-out, not opt-in, and forces users to understand and be outraged enough over what's going on to do something about it.

Whether you think Twitter's move is purely designed to improve their product or a creeping harbinger of future privacy intrusions, at least there are tools you can download—or that you may already have—that put control back into your hands. What do you think? Just another company looking to get their hands on your data, or much ado about nothing? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Provided you occasionally Google yourself you're probably well aware that your Twitter account is placed pretty high on Google's search rankings. Because of that it's usually best to make sure you're not doing anything too embarrassing. If you did release a bad tweet, the Twitter support page has put together a guide for getting those tweets out of Google's search.

If you don't want your Twitter account to show up on Google the best way to hide it is to change your name in your profile settings or alter your settings so your account is private. Even if you change your account to private every tweet prior to that change is still public and Google will cache those tweets for a long while. So what do you do if you need to hide that angry tweet that shows up in a Google search but you already deleted? Twitter's suggestion is to take it straight to Google:

1. Copy the Twitter URL you'd like removed (if you already deleted the tweet just follow Google's URL).
2. Head over to Google's Content Removal page.
3. Paste in the Twitter link that you copied in the first step and submit your request.

Google should remove the cached link pretty quickly and it won't show up in the Google search results for your name. This could come in very handy if you need to clean up your search results before submitting a job application. Hit up the Twitter support page for a few more ideas for hiding your Twitter info from search engines and if you need help with other pages consult our guide to fixing internet embarrassments.

Why is My Twitter Profile in Google Search? | Twitter Help Center via Mashable

Twitter moves fast, but it's a great way to stay on top of the news of the day, not to mention what everyone's watching on TV. If you hang out on Twitter during the day, why not follow the official @Lifehacker account to bring some tips, tricks, and downloads to your stream, all posted right after our articles go up. If you want a more personal touch, follow your favorite Lifehacker writer (or writers), we all use our accounts differently—whether it's tips we wouldn't dare publish, our favorite webcomics, or calls for your help with upcoming features.

Whether you have a favorite Lifehacker writer or you just want to see what makes the rest of us tick when we're not working on the site, here's where you can find each of us:

• Adam Pash: @adampash Follow @adampash
• Whitson Gordon: @whitsongordon Follow @whitsongordron
• Adam Dachis: @adachis Follow @adachis
• Melanie Pinola: @melaniepinola Follow @melaniepinola
• Alan Henry: @halophoenix Follow @halophoenix
• Thorin Klosowski: @kingthor Follow @kingthor

Sure, we post our own articles from time to time, but that's not all we do. Adam Pash is slacking off, Whitson wants some tea, Adam Dachis has a tip for anyone shopping for a mattress, Thorin learns the true horror of video editing, and I point out that Nikola Tesla is one of my heroes.

If you prefer Facebook to Twitter, you can find us there too! Just Like the Lifehacker Facebook page (or subscribing to us individiually) for polls and conversation on our top stories. If you're have a bone to pick with the folks who say Google+ is deserted, circle the Lifehacker page (or add us to your circles individually) to grab our stories as they're posted over there.

If all this social media business is too much for you but you still want your Lifehacker fix, we've got you covered! Subscribe to our newsletter for a daily digest of our top stores delivered to your inbox every evening, install the Lifehacker Notifier for Chrome to be notified when we post a new article, or just add our RSS feed to your favorite newsreader and check in whenever you like. However you choose to keep up with us, we're glad you choose to stay with us, so thank you!

Twitter just added a new feature that sends you a weekly email with the most popular tweets and links from people you follow. If you'd rather not get more spam in your inbox, here's how to nip this in the bud before it starts.

Twitter announced the feature yesterday, but it'll be rolling out over the next couple of weeks, so chances are you haven't even seen one of these digests yet. Sadly, Twitter signs you up without asking you, so you'll have to take some action to get rid of them. You could wait until it comes and unsubscribe directly from the email, but if you want to stop them before they start, just head to Twitter's Settings > Notifications > and uncheck the "Weekly digest of Stories & Tweets from my network" box at the bottom. Save your changes and you should never have to see one of those buggers make its way into your email.

Of course, if you think that sounds like a cool feature, you might also check out something like Paper.li, which performs a similar function but with offers daily updates.

The Best of Twitter In Your Inbox | Twitter Blog