advertisement
Facebook
X
LinkedIn
WhatsApp
Reddit

Twitter alerts Android users about a potential security problem

If you use Twitter on an Android device you may log into the platform to find a rather worrying message greeting you.

The full message, which you can see below, is a security update which lets users know that they may have been affected by some nebulous “security issues” if they’ve used the platform on Android.

Only be clicking through to the relevant page on Twitter’s Privacy Center, which is here, can more information be found. While that 96 percent of people being safe is nice to see, what happened to the rest?

“For the other 4%, this vulnerability could allow an attacker, through a malicious app installed on your device, to access private Twitter data on your device (like Direct Messages) by working around Android system permissions that protect against this,” reads the announcement.

Again, this is worrying stuff, but the social media giant is rather blasé in its suggestions for people. Regardless if you saw the message above or not, it’s recommended that you update your app to the latest version directly from the Google Play Store.

While that’s all end users can do, Twitter itself has stated that it has done a bit more on its end to shore things up:

  1. “Updated Twitter for Android to make sure external apps can’t access Twitter in-app data by adding extra safety precautions beyond standard OS protections
  2. Requiring anyone that may be impacted to update Twitter for Android
  3. Sending in-app notices to everyone who could have been vulnerable to let them know if they need to do anything
  4. Identifying changes to our processes to better guard against issues like this”

For now no further information has been provided about the exact number of people affected or how long this problem has been going on for.

The Twitter app for iOS and the desktop site twitter.com has not been affected, according to the announcement. That being said if you do visit the desktop site after using the Android app the security update message will appear there to keep you informed.

advertisement

About Author

advertisement

Related News

advertisement