From securingtomorrow.mcafee.com
Many of us use social media to keep our family and friends up-to-date on our everyday lives. We don’t typically expect social media companies to keep their partners updated on our every move as well. But for some Twitter users, this is exactly the situation they’ve found themselves in. On Monday afternoon, the social media company disclosed a bug that resulted in some Twitter users’ locations being shared with an unnamed Twitter partner.
So, how exactly did this bug disclose the locations of certain Twitter users? The social network accidentally sent advertising partners location data for a process called real-time bidding. This process lets advertisers pay for space based on certain users’ locations. Twitter intended to remove the location data from what it sent to its partners but failed to do so. Affected users include those who had more than one Twitter account on an iOS device. If the user chose to share their precise location on one account, Twitter says it may have collected and shared data for the other account on the same mobile device even if that account had opted out of location sharing. Although the location data was “fuzzed” to only show a ZIP code or city, it is still unclear as to how long this location sharing took place.