Twitter has apologized after exposing private information of business users as reported by the BBC. Business clients received an email stating that their information may have been compromised. The personal data includes email addresses, phone numbers. Most worryingly it also includes and the last four digits of clients’ credit card numbers.
The breach has affected business clients that use Twitter’s advertising and analytics platforms. This means that individual users will not have been compromised in this way.
Still, this is a worrying issue for Twitter especially considering the pressure they are under from politicians in the US.
Business information Twitter breach
It is not yet clear how many companies have been affected by this breach. It is also not clear how this breach has happened. The company has said that it was aware of the breach back on May 20 and has since fixed the problem. This means it has been over a month since the breach was discovered.
The email sent to business clients read. “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.”
Not the first data breach for Twitter
Phone Arena has pointed out that this is not the first time that Twitter has suffered similar breaches. In 2019 Twitter admitted that both business and non-business users have been affected by privacy issues. This issue stretches back until 2014.
Apparently, a bug caused by “Protect Your Tweets” exposed private tweets without the knowledge of users.
Twitter has been working hard over recent weeks and months to combat fake news and promote informed conversations. This has included placing fact-checking icons on tweets that link COVID-19 to 5G.
The company has also asked users to read tweets before sharing them if they may include misinformation. Some have described this as quite a novel approach but sometimes the simplest methods work the best.
Fact-checking and combating hate-speech has become an increasingly important part of social media companies’ remits.
However, as important as combating these issues is, if the companies are unable to control private information that is a real worry.
Business users will be rightly concerned about this breach, particularly because of how long it has taken to fix. There is also very little detail available about the scale of the breach and how it happened. Hopefully, little harm has been done but it is a worrying time for Twitter and its clients.