Twitter for Android users affected by a bug exposing private tweets to the public
Photo by Con Karampelas
2018 was not a good year for the protection of user data held by companies, and 2019 isn’t starting off great either. Twitter released a statement that some “Twitter for Android” users may have been affected by a privacy bug. If an Android user had “Protect your Tweets” on and modified certain settings, e.g. email, this bug would then disable the protected tweet for all to see. It’s unclear how many Android users were hit with this bug, as Twitter did not say in their statement, but from November 3, 2014, to January 14, 2019 was when this vulnerability was unfixed. The company did release a fix in their app update on January 14. Twitter is contacting affected users and changing their tweet settings back to “Protect your Tweets”. This is also a reminder that when you place content on the internet, unless it’s encrypted, one day everyone could potentially see your content.
