Some Android users may have had their ‘protected tweets’ exposed to the world thanks to a newly-discovered bug on the site.
Twitter
The issue affected some people on Android who had the ‘Protect your Tweets’ feature switched on, which hides tweets from public view.
Users on Android are believed to be affected if they ever made changes to their account’s settings, such as changing their log on email address.
The problem spanned between November 3, 2014, and January 14, 2019, Twitter revealed.
Writing on its online help page, Twitter stressed that the issue only affected some users of Twitter for Android and not those on Apple’s iOS or using Twitter on the web.
‘We recognise and appreciate the trust you place in us, and are committed to earning that trust every day,’ the company said
‘We’re very sorry this happened and we’re conducting a full review to help prevent this from happening again.’
Affected users have been notified, but the social network is urging people to review their account’s privacy settings as it is not able to confirm every account using Android that may have been affected.
Twitter’s admission comes as the company aims to take a more transparent approach, in response to increased scrutiny of tech giants.
In September, the firm’s chief executive Jack Dorsey told a US committee looking into the its algorithms and content monitoring that Twitter’s systems unfairly filtered 600,000 accounts, including some belonging to members of US congress.
The Twitter boss said the company’s algorithms were to blame for hiding some members from its auto-complete search and latest results – an issue it has since fixed.
‘In the spirit of accountability and transparency: recently we failed our intended impartiality,’ Mr Dorsey said at the time.
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