Late Friday some users have received notification from Twitter that their protected Tweets and DMs may have been exposed to third party developers without consent since May 2017.
The specific issue is related to one of their APIs that allows access to standard activies such as following a user, muting, blocking or DM-ing another user. Typically the interaction that may have caused messages to be exposed is when a business customer makes contact via Twitter allowing them to DM with the company, according to the issued notice from Twitter
Sorry, what ?! My DMs may have been sent to developers for a more than a year?? pic.twitter.com/0ry6pyZIdI
— Karissa Bell (@karissabe) September 21, 2018
The issue for potential exposure of the messages may occur when the business you’re communicating with is using a third party designed app, not an official Twitter app and the app interfaces with either Premium or Enterprise level API.
Twitter have made contact with the developers who potentially been able to access these messages and emplored them to delete any messages or information they may have accessed without consent. It’s definitely a smart move to resolve this as quickly as they have and bring it to the attention of users, rather than it being found and made public by an external party.
If your account may have been exposed, you can read more about the Account Activity API involved to increase your understanding of the issue and the extremely low chance of this occurring.
How do issues like the affect your confidence in messaging platforms to keep your information safe?
