Twitter Admits Circle Visibility Bug A Security Incident

Last month, we saw reports regarding tweets being made using the Twitter Circle feature being visible to more than its intended audience. The platform has not said anything publicly about it since. But more recently, a report notes that the company has acknowledged the issue as a “security incident” in an email to some affected users.

The Guardian reports that the email also notes that the issue “was identified by our security team and immediately fixed so that these tweets were no longer visible outside of your Circle”. That being said, the report did not date the email, so it’s difficult to tell when exactly Twitter claims to have fixed the privacy issue with its Circle feature.

In the same vein, the report also notes the existence of another privacy bug, which saw tweets made by private accounts being made visible to users outside of its approved followers. While similar in nature, one can argue that it’s a separate issue altogether. And so, it’s understandable to a degree why this was not addressed in the email in question.

Previously, one affected user and former Twitch engineer Theo Browne, speculated that this was due to Twitter failing to filter out private tweets before serving it to other users. For now, it is unclear if this is actually the case for the Twitter Circle issue, since the bird app simply referred to it vaguely as a security incident.

It took awhile, but at least the platform has addressed the issue, even if not exactly publicly. Twitter has been running a lean crew ever since new owner Elon Musk took over, and Twitter Circle as a feature has been buggy for months, according to a previous report by TechCrunch. Said report made not of another issue, though minor in comparison, where tweets made with the feature did not have the green banner that signified that it was a private tweet.

(Source: The Guardian)