Twitter Permissions & Security

"Currently Twitter application developers are given 2 choices when registering their apps – they can either request “read-only access” or “read & write” access. For Twitter “read & write” means being able to do anything through the API on a user’s behalf. These course-grained levels push most apps to choose “read & write”, in case they want to tweet on the user’s behalf, or make it simple to follow a Twitter account. Anecdotally, of the 130 apps & Twitter-integrated websites I’ve approved 91% have full read & write access to my Twitter account, with the other 9% having read-only access. (I probably use more apps than most, but hey, it’s my job.)"

Twitter Permissions & Security | oneforty devblog