After Facebook and WhatsApp, Twitter makes private tweets of Android users public

While hoaxes, bugs and glitches have become an inevitable part of social networking sites, the latest trouble in the string is a Twitter snag which exposed over five-year-old private tweets of some Android users to strangers. The bug hit twitterati after they made some changes in their settings. Those changes include the replacement of their email address linked to the Twitter account. Soon after the glitch came to light, the micro-blogging platform acknowledged and fixed the same. In a statement, Twitter said the latest bug disabled the "Protect your Tweets" setting after Android users made some certain changes on their Twitter account. However, the bug did not affect people using Twitter on iOS or desktop.

"You may have been impacted by this issue if you had protected Tweets turned on in your settings, used Twitter for Android, and made certain changes to account settings such as changing the email address associated with your account between November 3, 2014, and January 14, 2019," Twitter said on its Help page.

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

"People on iOS or the web were not impacted. We fixed the issue on January 14, and we'll provide updates if other important information becomes available," the American social networking site added.

The company said it has informed those who were affected by the bug, and has turned "Protect your Tweets" back on for them if it was disabled. "We encourage you to review your privacy settings to ensure that your 'Protect your Tweets' setting reflects your preferences," said Twitter, adding it is sorry for the mishap.

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After creating a lot of buzz over hoaxes on 'WhatsApp Gold', another new bug recently hit WhatsApp which exposed some of the Android users' personal messages to strangers. Another group of users, inroduced a seperate bug that was deleting their old chats of over 1 year. However, the Facebook-owned messaging app in a statement said it was a result of not keeping a back up of data and chats on Google Drive for over a year.

In 2018, in a massive data breach incident, private data of about 87 million Facebook users - mostly in the US - was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica. The Mark Zuckerberg-owned company, however, had promised to take all the necessary steps to ensure that such breaches do not recur in future.