Just yesterday I wrote on the story of UberSocial’s privacy issues addressed by Twitter. In case you’re unaware, some direct messages being sent back and forth may not have been private for users using the twitter client, UberSocial.
Well Earlier today, UberMedia has now come forth and have publicly addressed the privacy issue via Tweet and through UberMedia’s Blog. Read More >
Earlier today, we were informed by Twitter of an issue in which direct messages sent using the SMS convention “D username” that were greater than 140 characters, and therefore posted on public websites maintained by our partners TMI.me and Twitlonger, could be discovered by people other than the intended recipient. Since we are extremely protective of our users’ privacy, we immediately went to work to resolve this issue.
We’re pleased to report that the folks at TMI.me and Twitlonger did incredible work over the last couple of hours to address this issue on the server side – particularly valiant on Twitlonger’s behalf since their staff is in Ireland and were heading to bed.
What’s especially noteworthy about this solution is that because it was done at the server level, all Twitter apps that use these two services, whether from UberMedia or any other company, can now assure their users that the privacy of their long direct messages is maintained.
Further, it’s important to note that this issue only arises when one of our users employs a non-standard method of sending a direct message. All of our apps use the @username convention when sending a direct message, so for anyone to run into this issue would require typing “D username” instead of using the built-in DM functionality. In the process of addressing this issue, we also discovered that two additional SMS conventions – “M username” and “dm username” – exhibited the same unexpected behavior, and TMI.me and Twitlonger were able to address these as well.
As always, we appreciate your loyalty to our products and your continuing trust that we will do whatever it takes to maintain your privacy.
Via Nerdberry boyz for the tip