Twitter bug made people's private tweets public, company admits
Protecting tweets is supposed to keep them private, and is used by people whose posts might endanger them
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Your support makes all the difference.A Twitter bug meant that private tweets were made public, the site has admitted.
Android users who had kept their private for more than four years were vulnerable to the bug, which would have exposed their posts despite them having chosen for them not to be public.
The company allows users to protect tweets, hiding them from public view so that only approved people can follow and read posts from an account. Twitter users often protect their tweets because allowing anyone to read them might endanger them or cause other problems.
Those using Twitter for Android may have been affected by the bug if they made changes to their account's settings, such as changing the email address they use on their account, Twitter said.
The problem occurred on some accounts between November 2014 and January 2019.
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.
Additional reporting by Press Association
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