Twitter admits ‘security incident’ led Circle tweets showing for others: Report – Times of India

Twitter users, last month, alleged that a bug with “Twitter Circle” showed their tweets to others outside the circle. Now, almost a month later, the social media company reportedly admitted that the exposure of private tweets was the result of “a security incident that occurred earlier this year.”
Citing an email seen by The Guardian reported that Twitter told affected users that the tweets meant for ‘close friends’ was due to a “a security incident” – which was claimed to be “immediately fixed.” It also apologised to affected users.
“Twitter is committed to protecting the privacy of the people who use our service, and we understand the risks that an incident like this can introduce and we deeply regret this happened,” the company was quoted as saying.
Private tweets exposed to all followers
It was reported last month that some tweets, which were meant for users in “Twitter Circle”, showed up for those outside the circle. It meant that if you were sharing some information exclusively meant for a certain group of people on Twitter, it showed up for others as well. The twitterati blamed a bug for this issue.
What is Twitter Circle?
Introduced last year, Twitter Circle is the micro-blogging platform’s take on Instagram‘s ‘Closed Friends’ story feature wherein when selected by a user, tweets will be shared with a “smaller crowd,” – only with the followers the user has chosen. No one else can see them or even will get to know that there exists a story which is not meant to be seen by all.
Additionally, in this case, only those selected for the “Close Friends” group can interact or reply to the post.
When a ‘private post’ (tweet or story on Instagram) is posted, there is a green colour circle to denote its exclusivity. In Twitter’s case the green colour circle did not show up and those who posted the ‘private tweet’ did not get to know that their private tweets were public.