Twitter accounts outside the US are under EU data protection rules

Account information for Twitter users outside the US is handled by Twitter International in Dublin, Ireland. This means that all account information will be subject to Irish privacy and data protection law, which is based on the European Union’s Data Protection Directive.

The accounts of US users will still be handled by Twitter’s head office in San Francisco under US law.

Since 2014’s ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling gave Spain’s privacy regulator the right to enforce EU privacy laws against Google, privacy regulators in other countries have taken this ruling to start their own procedures against tech companies. This means that companies like Twitter and Facebook, which also has its European headquarters in Ireland, are now subject to the scrutiny of privacy regulators other than the Irish DPC.

Meanwhile, the EU is preparing a new Data Protection Regulation under which European privacy regulators are planned to have more cooperation on cross-border privacy cases.