After weeks of silence, Twitter has finally acknowledged a bug that caused tweets shared within users private Twitter Circles to become public. Affected users received an email from the platform on Friday, notifying them of a “security incident” that resulted in their semi-private tweets being visible to a wider audience beyond their intended Circle of close friends.
The email, obtained by Fortune, stated, “In April 2023, a security incident may have allowed users outside of your Twitter Circle to see tweets that should have otherwise been limited to the Circle to which you were posting.” It further explained that the issue was promptly identified and resolved by the Twitter security team, ensuring that the affected tweets were no longer visible outside of the intended Circle.
Twitter Circle allows users to share tweets exclusively with a private group of followers, thereby limiting their visibility to a select audience rather than broadcasting them to all followers or the public. However, in April, users started encountering glitches with this feature. In a test tweet, one user discovered that a person outside their Twitter Circle could see a tweet they had specifically sent to their personal list of followers.
One month after this incident, impacted users received the email from Twitter, acknowledging the issue and reassuring them that the security team had addressed the problem. The exact number of users affected by this bug remains unknown.
“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,” expressed the company in the email to affected users, according to Fortune.
