Pierluigi Paganini May 15, 2019

Twitter confirmed revealed that a bug in its iOS app it the root cause for an inadvertent collection of location data and sharing it with a third-party.

A new story of a violation of the user’s privacy made the lines, Twitter revealed that due to a bug is collected and shared iOS location data with a third-party advertising company,

Fortunately, only one partner of the micro-blogging firm was involved and the data collection and sharing occurred in certain circumstances.

“We have discovered that we were inadvertently collecting and sharing iOS location data with one of our trusted partners in certain circumstances.” reads the security advisory published by Twitter.

“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 admitted having failed into removing the location data from the information shared with the trusted advertising partner that was accessing it during real-time bidding process. 

The company pointed out that location data its shared could not be used to track individuals because it had implemented technical measures to “fuzz” the information. Twitter explained that shared was no more precise than zip code or city (5km squared).

Twitter did not share users’ handles or other unique account IDs, this means that it was impossible to link the identity of a specific user to a geographic location. 

“The partner did not receive data such as your Twitter handle or other unique account IDs that could have compromised your identity on Twitter.” continues the announcement.

“This means that for people using Twitter for iOS who we inadvertently collected location information from, we may also have shared that information with a trusted advertising partner,”

Another good news is that the partner did not retain the data that was deleted “as part of their normal process.” 

Twitter has already fixed the issue and notified the incident to all the impacted users, anyway it did not reveal the extent of the incident either for how long it shared the data with its partner.

“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,” concludes Twitter.

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – privacy, data leak)

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