The private Tweets that were sent by the Android app Twitter could have been exposed publicly for many years. The micro blogging site in a blog has said that it has discovered a security flaw which means that the so called ‘protected’ Tweets became public when some changes were made to the accounts. The blog further informed that the Twitter users who had updated their email addresses linked to their account between November 2014 and January 2019 could have had the messages exposed.
The micro blogging site added that it has already started informing the affected users about the bug. Twitter also assured that it has turned the protections back on for the Android users who had by mistake switched them off without the intention to turn it off. The social network also said that it is issuing a public notice about the error as it could not confirm the exact number of accounts that have been affected. It intends to reach those the company could not identify with an internal investigation.
Twitter apologized, “We’re very sorry this happened and we’re conducting a full review to help prevent this from happening again”. The company is also encouraging the users to check their privacy settings to make sure that they had reflected their preferences. The micro blogging site informed that it had fixed the flaw on January 14, 2019 and that it would share more information if it became available.
It has to be also noticed that users who used Twitter through an Apple device or through web would not have been affected by the bug. The American social and micro blogging site was found on March 21, 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams. It was launched by July 2006 and gained rapid popularity across the globe. In 2016, the site had more than 319 million monthly active users.
Photo Credits: The next Web
