Twitter apologises for misuse of user data since last May

Twitter has admitted to sharing user data without their permission and has since apologised in a blog post, adding that the issues have been rectified on 5 August. Twitter explained that since May 2018, certain data points such as country code, whether consumers engaged with the ad, and information about the ad were shared with “trusted” measurement and ad partners without users’ permission.It also admitted to having shown users ads based on inferences it made about the devices they use since September 2018, even if Twitter was not granted the permission to do so. It explained that this is part of a process it undertakes to try and serve more relevant advertising on the platform. However, Twitter clarified that the data involved stayed within Twitter and did not contain information such as passwords and email accounts.Twitter said an investigation is currently underway to determine who may have been impacted and will share any useful information it discovers. “You trust us to follow your choices and we failed here. We’re sorry this happened, and are taking steps to make sure we don’t make a mistake like this again,” the company said.It added that aside from checking their settings, it “[doesn’t] believe there is anything for [users] to do”. It also urged consumers to contact Twitter’s office of data protection if they had any further queries.This news comes at a time where data breaches have become more prevalent in this digital age. In April, Datasets from two third-party facebook apps were exposed to the public, according to cybersecurity firm UpGuard. Last year, Facebook found potentially 65,009 users in Singapore at risk of having their information improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica. The platform also confirmed that 1,096,666 accounts in Indonesia were put at risk as well. Meanwhile on Instagram, a data leak from third-party company Chtrbox recently also affected 350,000 individuals.In May this year, Twitter said it discovered it was “inadvertently collecting and sharing” iOS location data with one of its trusted partners in certain circumstances. It added in a previous blog post that if consumers used more than one account on Twitter for iOS and opted into using the precision location feature in one account, it may have “accidentally collected” location data when they were using any other accounts on the same device for which it had not turned on the precise location feature.While Twitter had intended to remove location data from the fields sent to a trusted partner during an advertising process known as real-time bidding, this did not happen as planned. However, Twitter explained that it had implemented technical measures to “fuzz” the data shared so that it was no more precise than a zip code or city.Read also:Twitter restructures internally to ‘refine its value proposition’ to advertisersHow Twitter is striving not to be forgotten in the digital advertising game(Photo courtesy: 123RF)