Twitter’s going to start monitoring the other apps on your phone

In a slightly worrying set of developments, Twitter has announced that its mobile app will soon be checking to see what other apps you have on your phone. Why? Because it wants to use that information to personalise the adverts you see.

The new programme is called AppGraph, and what is means is that Twitter will be able see what apps you have in order to build a better profile of who you are. By doing so it will be able to serve you adverts that are supposedly more relevant, meaning you’re more likely to click them and earn Twitter money.

Don’t worry too much, though. Unlike Facebook which tracks your browser history whenever you’re logged in, you can actually opt out of this new feature and get the same generic boring ads that you get now:

It’s relatively unintrusive in the grand scheme of things, but an obvious reminder that the apps on your phone are capable of collecting information on you when you’re not actually using them. Adverts may be a necessary evil, but we might as well try and stop them from being creepy.