If you are the kind of Twitter user that uses more than one account on your iOS device, then you should be aware of a new announcement from the social network. Twitter confirmed on Monday that a bug collected iOS user’s unauthorized location data.
The social network made a public blog post in its help center today. The company confirms that a recently discovered bug made it possible for Twitter to not only collect an iOS user’s location data, but also share that information as well. Twitter says that information was shareable to its “trusted partners in certain circumstances”.
“Specifically, if you used more than one account on Twitter for iOS and opted into using the precise location feature in one account, we may have accidentally collected location data when you were using any other account(s) on that same device for which you had not turned on the precise location feature.”
Twitter says that it was planning on using something called “real-time bidding”. This was meant to remove location data from fields sent to those aforementioned partners. However, the bug made it so that the location data was not removed. However, Twitter says it did “‘fuzz’ the data shared so that it was no more precise than zip code or city (5km squared). This location data could not be used to determine an address or to map your precise movements”. Those partners where location data was shared did not receive a Twitter handle or any other personal information tied to an account.
Twitter notes that it has confirmed with those partners that the location data was only stored for a short period of time, and that it has not been permanently retained. The information that was collected should have already been deleted.
And, finally:
“We have fixed this problem and are working hard to make sure it does not happen again. We have also communicated with the people whose accounts were impacted to let them know the bug has been fixed. We invite you to check your privacy settings to make sure you’re only sharing the data you want to with us.
We’re very sorry this happened. We recognize and appreciate the trust you place in us and are committed to earning that trust every day.”
Twitter says you can contact the Office of Data Protection through the source link below to get in touch with the social network and learn more.
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[via Twitter]
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