SwiftKey bug showed some users other peoples e-mail addresses

In a blog post late yesterday, SwiftKey confirmed what some of you have been telling us about. Some users of SwiftKey’s popular keyboard replacement app were seeing unfamiliar predictions popping up, including other people’s e-mail addresses.

The long story short is that there seems to have been some ‘leakage’ from people’s individualised predictions over to the wider predictions that SwiftKey provides. SwiftKey says user security has not been compromised but we only half agree. Yes, we are confident that their secure log-in database was not affected and everyone’s log-in information is protected. However, I for one would prefer that my e-mail address remained private.

For now, SwiftKey has disabled the cloud sync feature while they work to rectify the issue. The bug only seems to have affected a small number of users, I certainly never had an issue. In the blog post the state “(we) are updating our applications to remove email address predictions”. I hope they only mean remove them from the open database and not the feature altogether.

The issue wasn’t confined to email addresses however with users also getting suggestions for other people most commonly used words. I hope my database didn’t leak, I’d hate my number one search term to have leaked “Back-Street Boys”. We are hearing reports that some NSFW style predictions were being served so that’s less than a good thing, however.

If you’re a SwiftKey user there’s there is probably no reason to worry, that said we should all expect some free keyboard themes to rain down any day now.

Are you a SwiftKey User? Did you notice the issues? Let us know below.