Twitter admits to revealing location of users without consent

Twitter said that specific locations were revealed without users' permission due to a "bug".

New Delhi: Micro-blogging site Twitter has admitted that it had revealed location of users without their consent.

Twitter said that specific locations included with some of its users` tweets were revealed without their permission last week due to a "bug".

"We`ve discovered an issue for a small percentage of people who recently had location-sharing on, Tweeted from https://twitter.com, and tapped to add an emoji or GIF,” the social media giant posted late on Friday.

We’ve discovered an issue for a small percentage of people who recently had location sharing on, Tweeted from https://t.co/fuPJa3nVky, and tapped to add an emoji or GIF. In certain instances, a city-level location was also included in the Tweet.

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) November 24, 2017

Twitter users have reportedly tweeted about the privacy issue last week, directed at accounts associated with Twitter and its founders.

Some users claimed the location added to their tweets was not their actual location but instead a place they had recently visited or searched for on the micro-blogging site.

The company has said it has removed the locations from tweets that were affected by the bug and has also reached out to such accounts users via email (if it`s provided to them), according to Inverse.com.

We've removed the locations from potentially affected Tweets & are directly emailing those who may have been impacted, if an email address has been provided to us. We take these types of issues seriously. We’re sorry this occurred & will continue our work to make Twitter better.

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) November 24, 2017

This comes barely two days after Google confirmed the practice of gathering location data through Android smartphones even when the location services were turned off and there was no SIM card in the device.

The search engine giant has now been summoned by regulators in South Korea this week for questioning.

With IANS Inputs