Year-end was not a good time for Twitter. Reports surfaced in November that hundreds of Facebook and Twitter users had their emails, usernames and recent tweets exposed through faulty Android apps. Then in December, Twitter admitted that a security flaw allowed bad actors to see non-public account information or to control your account to send Tweets or Direct Messages. Twitter claimed that the flaw took effect only if you happened to inadvertently insert a malicious code.
But in late December, a security researcher in London discovered that when you upload your contacts to Twitter, the app fetches user data, which would enable malicious actors to match phone numbers uploaded into the app with the Twitter records and figure out account usernames. In short, if someone knows your phone number they could potentially figure out their Twitter persona.
While Twitter said that it had no evidence that anyone’s account was actually hacked or exploited, it did admit there were two bad actors involved who were paying developers to use malicious software development kits. This is the latest in a series of bugs or hacking attacks that has plagued Twitter and other social networks, including Facebook.
The takeaway to all this is, do not upload your contacts to Twitter. If you do, or if you already have on your Android device, your phone number could be one of 17 million exposed on the app.
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