CNET también está disponible en español.

Ir a español

Don't show this again

Coronavirus updates Idris Elba tests positive for coronavirus Westworld season 3 review Fortnite players surge amid coronavirus Apple bans non-official coronavirus apps from App Store Disney Plus now streams Frozen 2

Twitter may have shared your data with ad partners without consent

Data collected without your permission may include information about ads you engaged with and assumptions about devices you use.

twitter-logo-1

Twitter may have shared some of your data without your permission.

 Angela Lang/CNET

Twitter says it recently found issues with how it adheres to user privacy settings and that it may've inadvertently shared user data with third parties. The microblogging network said in a company blog post Tuesday that it may've shared certain data even though you didn't give it permission to do so.

Twitter users who clicked or viewed an ad for a mobile app since May 2018 may've shared data about the experience with third-party measurement and advertising partners, Twitter said. Data that would've been shared includes users' country code, information about the ad, and whether they engaged with the ad and when.

The other issue relates to assumptions Twitter made about the devices favored by its users as it tried to deliver more-relevant targeted ads. Twitter said this data stayed within the company and didn't include sensitive personal information such as email addresses or passwords.

Tech companies have come under intense scrutiny in recent years regarding how they collect and store users' data. Much of the focus has been on Facebook, but Twitter also collects user data.

Twitter has sought to be more transparent about how it collects, uses and shares your data, and last year the company revealed its new privacy policy. That update came out a month before a set of sweeping new EU regulations called the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, went into effect.

Twitter said Tuesday that it fixed the issues on Monday.

"We take these issues seriously and whenever an issue arises, we conduct a review to ensure that we make changes to prevent these types of issues recurring," a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. "In this case, we have deployed a fix which has corrected the data sharing authorization signals that caused this issue."