Twitter Says Some iOS Users Saw Location Data Leaked

Twitter has announced some iOS users saw their location data leaked to one of their third-party partners:

We have discovered that we were inadvertently collecting and sharing iOS location data with one of our trusted partners in certain circumstances.

Specifically, if you used more than one account on Twitter for iOS and opted into using the precise location feature in one account, we may have accidentally collected location data when you were using any other account(s) on that same device for which you had not turned on the precise location feature.

The social network says, “we had intended to remove location data from the fields sent to a trusted partner during an advertising process known as real-time bidding. This removal of location did not happen as planned.”



Twitter did say they used technical measures to blur out exact location data, but says pinpoint locations were down to a 5km squared, or by city or zip code. The location sharing data has since been removed by the partner.

The third-party partner did not get your Twitter handle or other unique IDs that would have revealed our online identity, but says those who saw data collected would have seen info possibly shared.

Twitter told TechCrunch it would not disclose any further information, such as when the location data sharing happened and the length of time, or who the trusted partner was and how the incident occurred. Those affected by the leak will be have been contacted by Twitter, according to the company.

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