TWITTER MAY KEEP DELETED DMs FOR YEARS

Even after users have deactivated or deleted their account, a ‘functional bug’ allowed Twitter to save its users messages platform for multiple years, shows a report.

According to the TechCrunch report, Twitter stores its users’ direct messages for multiple years even if they have deactivated the account. The messages are kept stored even if the sender and recipient have deleted the said messages.

The issue, which was brought in front of TechCrunch by security researcher Karan Saini, resulted from a bug that was showing him direct messages stored in his Twitter archive, which even include messages from suspended or deactivated accounts.

While Twitter’s privacy policy states, a deactivated account disappears 30 days but the log data for it can be kept for as long as 18 months, the report said that the company was able to retrieve messages dated back many years.

In reply, a Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch that this issue can be labelled as a ‘functional bug’ rather than a ‘security bug’.

In related news, Twitter might soon be adding a clarify feature to its system.