Twitter bug discovered after five years exposed private tweets of Android users
Bad news for Twitter users, as the company has just admitted that it recently discovered a bug that may have affected Android users since November 3, 2014. The issue wasn't present on the iOS version of the app, so if you have an iPhone, your tweets should be safe from prying eyes.
The bug found in Twitter for Android disabled the “Protect your Tweets” setting if certain account changes were made. Basically, if you had protected Tweets turned on in your settings, and then made certain changes to account settings (i.e. change email address), then your private tweets may have been exposed to other users.
According to Twitter, the bug has been fixed on January 14 and those who the company knows were affected by the issue were informed and had “Protect your Tweets” feature enabled again if it was disabled.
Unfortunately, since Twitter can confirm all accounts affected by the security issue, you should check whether or not “Protect your Tweets” has been enabled automatically after the update rolled out earlier this week.
The bug found in Twitter for Android disabled the “Protect your Tweets” setting if certain account changes were made. Basically, if you had protected Tweets turned on in your settings, and then made certain changes to account settings (i.e. change email address), then your private tweets may have been exposed to other users.
Unfortunately, since Twitter can confirm all accounts affected by the security issue, you should check whether or not “Protect your Tweets” has been enabled automatically after the update rolled out earlier this week.
Things that are NOT allowed: