Unnoticed Twitter bug exposing private tweets since five years

Twitter recently noticed a bug on its platform that has been exposing private tweets of users for the past five years.

Twitter recently informed and apologized users for a bug that has affected the platform’s privacy since 2014 by exposing tweets of some Android users that were intended to be private. However, as per Twitter, it has now fixed the bug.

The micro-blogging website explained that the problem occurred when people using Twitter for the Android app attempted to alter settings on their account, including updating their email address. After making those changes, Twitter would disable the ‘Protect your Tweets’ settings if the account had it enabled.

We’ve become aware of and fixed an issue where the “Protect your Tweets” setting was disabled on Twitter for Android. Those affected have been alerted and we’ve turned the setting back on for them. More here: https://t.co/0qM5B1S393

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) January 17, 2019

The bug affected those Android users who made the changes to their account between November 3, 2014 and January 14, 2019. Twitter also mentioned that it fixed the bug on January 14 and has reached out to some of the users who were affected by the bug and also turned back the tweet protection feature for them.

Though the bug didn’t affect Twitter on iOS or desktop, Twitter still recommended users who wish to keep their tweets private to double-check their settings in order to ensure that the ‘Protect your Tweets’ is enabled.