Social media platforms serve many purposes and have become an inseparable part of our lives in the present times. Be it sharing news, information, opinions over a specific issue or just using them for plain entertainment, social media platforms have paved their way into people’s lives. It is essential to have this crucial data backed up to recover it later in case of a mishap where you end up losing your data from your Twitter account. With that being said, let’s learn how to back up a Twitter account. They all are essential, and you do not want to lose them. In this post, we will share how you can backup your Twitter account.
Need For Backing Up Twitter Data
As mentioned earlier, Twitter has a massive user base all across the globe. To protect the integrity, and for security reasons, there have been instances where the twitter management has taken harsh steps against users and their Twitter accounts, which may cause the owners of those accounts to lose their Twitter user data for good.
There’s no saying when and how the accounts of users like you and me will be targeted. It is also entirely possible to forget our account credentials and lose our account for good. That is precisely why we should create a backup for our Twitter account’s data that we can safely access even if somehow we end up losing our account.
Let’s now take a look at the steps we need to follow to safely backup our Twitter account (account’s data, to be precise) that we can access easily anytime later.
Steps To Backup Your Twitter Account
In this section, we’ll be going over a step-by-step guide that will help you back up your Twitter account safely. This method will allow you to backup your Twitter account in zip file format. Twitter has in-app features that let users make a backup of their account and the account’s data that they can save. In the unfortunate case of losing the account for whatever possible reasons, the backed-up account’s data may be of great help.
The process of backing up the account itself is pretty simple, but what to do with that backed-up data is a question that arises along with many other questions. We’ll answer all of that under the FAQ section later in this article, but for now, let’s take a look at the steps you need to follow to back up your Twitter account safely.
- Go to twitter.com
- We’ll have to look for either the Navigation Menu icon or your Profile icon, for starters.
- Click on Navigation Menu/Profile and navigate to an option named Settings and Privacy. That’s where we’ll find several options for changing the Twitter account’s settings as per our preferences. Click on Settings and Privacy to proceed further.
- Under Settings and Privacy, look for an option named Your Account. Click on it.
- Under Your Account, look for Download an archive of your data option, click on it.
- The next step is to verify your identity for security purposes. Click on the Send code option. Twitter will now send a code to either your email or your phone number, depending on which of them you chose to add while creating your Twitter account. If you have no email or phone number added, you’ll be redirected to the Account information page.
- Enter the code Twitter sent to your email/phone number.
- Once the app has verified your identity, find an option named Request Archive. After you click on the request archive option, it will take around 24 hours for your Twitter backup to be ready for download. You’ll be notified once your download is prepared, either via email or push notification.
- Another email with a download link will be sent to you. Once you’ve made sure you’re logged into your Twitter account, click on Download, and that will download a zip file of your Twitter archive.
This zip file of your Twitter archive will contain your tweets, photos, videos, and other media. In short, it is a backup of your Twitter account.
How Much Info Does Backed Up Data Contain?
Backed-up data or the zip file of your Twitter archive primarily contains your tweets and media. These are stored in your account’s database and are saved in your Twitter archive. Backed-up data will show all of your direct messages, tweets, photos, videos, and gifs that you’ve posted from your account. It does not contain any crucial information about your account or any details that can pose a security risk.
How To View Backed-up Data Safely?
A Twitter archive contains a snapshot of your account’s activity, and when you download your Twitter archive for the purpose of backing up your Twitter account, it is downloaded in zip format. Now the question is, what to do with that downloaded data? You can always extract the zip file using a zip extraction tool that is readily available on the internet, and you can also use your PC’s zip extraction feature for the same.
However, there are specific software/tools available on the internet that are designed for the sole purpose of viewing your Twitter archive. Once you’ve extracted it, a new folder will appear. Open it, and click on Your archive.html. It will open a browser tab to see your backed-up data, i.e., your direct messages, tweets, and media.
How Long Does A Twitter Archive Take To Get Prepared?
The time taken for a twitter archive to be fully prepared for download may vary from user to user. It can take more than 24 hours to process the request, and the time taken depends on various factors.
