Twitter Apologises After It Found A Firefox Cache Bug Was Storing Your DMs

Twitter Apologises After It Found A Firefox Cache Bug Was Storing Your DMs

Twitter has revealed users accessing the site through Mozilla Firefox might have had their non-public information, like direct messages, stored in the browser for days after they logged off due to a cache bug.

Twitter alerted its users on April 2 about the Mozilla Firefox bug but said it had been fixed, apologising for the breach.

“We recently learned that the way Mozilla Firefox stores cached data may have resulted in non-public information being inadvertently stored in the browser’s cache,” Twitter said in a statement on April 2.

“This means that if you accessed Twitter from a shared or public computer via Mozilla Firefox and took actions like downloading your Twitter data archive or sending or receiving media via Direct Message, this information may have been stored in the browser’s cache even after you logged out of Twitter.”

For most of us using private devices, this might not be a huge issue but if you logged on to someone else’s device or a public one, it means that data might have been accessible for up to seven days.

To inform users, Twitter also issued a popup alert for those accessing the site on the browser.

How to fix Twitter cache bug

Twitter is suggesting affected users to clear browser caches if they’re using shared computers. To do that on Mozilla Firefox, head to Options under the hamburger menu and then select Privacy & Security.

Once you’re there, scroll down to Cookies and Site Data and hit the Clear Data button.

If you have more questions, however, you can get in contact with Twitter’s Data Protection Officer by filling out this form.

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