Twitter users with protected accounts will no longer have to worry about a bug that allows unapproved account holders to see their hidden tweets. While exposed twitterers might not have been aware about the problem, the microblogging site has fixed the issue.
For those who are not familiar, protected accounts on Twitter only allow approved followers to see posts. By default, accounts are created as public Twitter accounts, meaning anyone can see the tweets posted by the user.
Bob Lord, director of information security at Twitter, has revealed the problem through a blog post but did not offer a lot of details with regard to how they fixed it.
"We were alerted to and fixed a bug in our system that, for 93,788 protected accounts under rare circumstances, allowed non-approved followers to receive protected tweets via SMS or push notifications since November 2013. As part of the bug fix, we've removed all of these unapproved follows, and taken steps to protect against this kind of bug in the future," wrote Lord.
"While the scope of this bug was small in terms of affected users, that does not change the fact that this should not have happened. We've emailed each of these affected users to let them know about this bug and extend our whole-hearted apologies," he added.
Based on the IPO documents filed in October by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Twitter has roughly 218 million active monthly users. The ratio between the monthly active users and the number of users affected by the resolved bug, it was just like a pinch from a big jar of salt.
The microblogging site also extended its appreciation to a member of its white hat expert community who helped detect and workup the said bug.
In mid-February, experimented on appearance and layout of the tweet stream of users to give it a cleaner look. The profile pages of those who got to test drive the refreshed look were tweaked to have bigger profile pictures and cover photos. The experimental look had hints of Google+ and Facebook.
On March 3, the company had a technical glitch that sent out warning emails to users asking them to reset their passwords. The company clarified that no attack occured and that it was just a big mistake on its part.
Parents and advocacy groups might also have celebrated over the weekend as Twitter banned pornographic images and clips on its video sharing service Vine. While the company set distinct guidelines on what is allowed and not, it warned violators that they will be banned if the rules and terms of service will be violated.
During the Oscars, Twitter also crashed due to the record-breaking re-tweet of the selfie of this year's event host Ellen DeGeneres with some of the biggest stars of Hollywood. That night, the servers of Twitter just could not handle 2.6 million retweets for the much-celebrated selfie.
