Twitter issues warning to Vine users after email addresses and phone numbers were exposed
Twitter has issued a warning to Vine users to be cautious about opening unknown emails after the email addresses and phone numbers of some users were exposed to third parties by a bug.
Vine was effectively closed at the beginning of the year but its site remains online
In a mass email to Vine users, the company said the bug was only active for 24 hours and that it is not aware of data being misused in any way during that time. The social network also said that passwords were not exposed as part of the bug.
The company also posted about the bug on Medium, the online publishing platform developed by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams.
The bug affected the Vine Archive, which the company describes as a “time capsule” of all Vines that were uploaded with the service.
The company declined to officially comment to various news outlets on the specifics of how the bug was discovered or how it may have been seen by third parties, but it is understood that this data was not readily available to the public but could have been accessed by more technical means such as using an API.
Twitter is urging users who receive the email to remain alert for suspicious emails or text messages.
Twitter announced it would shut down the video-sharing service at the end of last year after it failed to make the product profitable. But the company continues to maintain an online archive of Vine videos and a basic utility for users to still make short, looping video clips - leaving it open to data security breaches.