Ever wondered how to view tweets from a private account? Here are the ways you have at your disposal.
We can’t help it. Our thirst for curiosity reaches unique heights when we log into Twitter, and we even want to know how to view tweets from a private account. The moment we come across the dreaded padlock on a celebrity’s or even a co-worker’s account, we are automatically even more eager to know what posts that account hides.
It is quite complicated to have access to those protected tweets without the author’s consent, so the only way we have to be able to read them is by sending a follow request. When we enter the profile of a user with a private account we will not see anything strange a priori (beyond the padlock next to their name). To be able to follow them, click on ‘Follow’ and this button will automatically appear with the message ‘Pending’.
We will have to wait until that user connects and reviews their follow requests. If they approve our request, we will be able to read their TL as well as the other accounts we follow. This is the only way that exists today to see tweets from a private account.
It may happen that the user rejects your request. If this happens, check if in his Twitter bio he has an email address to which you can address and try to send him a message to convince him, although if he has rejected you in the first instance, it is likely that he will continue to do so in the future.
In the event that you are the one who wants to change the account settings and set it as private, you just have to deploy the main menu in the application (the icon with the three stripes that you find on the top left), click ‘Settings and privacy’ and access the ‘Privacy and security’ submenu. There, you will have to activate the tab next to ‘Protect your Tweets’.
How To View Private Twitter Accounts Without Following Them
We may not want to send a request to the user on duty, but we do want to know how to view private accounts on Twitter without following them. In this case, there are some alternatives, but none of them guarantees success.
The first thing you can do is to find out if you have a friend or acquaintance in common who is following that account to let you know the content they are publishing. From an ethical point of view, this alternative is quite debatable and could even cause the user who has the private account to deny access to your acquaintance if he finds out that he is sharing what he is publishing with someone who is not his follower.
Another possible solution is to create a new account and send a follow request through it. This way, you will still not become a follower of that person with your main account and could go unnoticed. This may even be an advantage when it comes to having access to those tweets.
Finally, as is inevitable, you will find a multitude of websites and applications that offer services that theoretically allow you to view private accounts on Twitter without needing to follow them. Be very careful with this type of external application to Twitter, as they do not guarantee at all to get to read these tweets (there is no way to do it without the consent of the owner of the private account) and could compromise the security of your account by providing data from it. In short, you could be seriously harmed by not having curbed your curiosity.
To detect whether a page is fraudulent or not, you can enter its URL on scamadviser.com to see if other users have reported it and what security risks it may pose. Our advice is to stay as far away from these sites as possible.