News, views and top stories in your inbox. Don't miss our must-read newsletter Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Twitter has admitted that timelines that were set to private might have been exposed through a bug in the company's Android app.

The bug affected users between November 3 2014 and January 14 2019, the company said.

When users marked their timeline as private if they then changed a setting in their profile the privacy option was changed. That would mean that their tweets would then be available through search and to any users of the social network.

On the Twitter website and iOS app the privacy setting worked correctly and users who opted to protect their tweets would not be visible to anyone but their approved followers.

(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Twitter has now fixed the issue and informed users it knows were affected. It apologised for the mistake in a post on its help site.

The company said "We've informed people we know were affected by this issue and have turned 'Protect your Tweets' back on for them if it was disabled. We are providing this broader notice through the Twitter Help Center since we can’t confirm every account that may have been impacted."

"We recognize and appreciate the trust you place in us, and are committed to earning that trust every day. We’re very sorry this happened and we’re conducting a full review to help prevent this from happening again."

Tweet privacy can be crucially important to some people. Those with contentious feeds might opt to hide them from the general public to avoid problems with employers.

And from a safety perspective some people may choose to make their profile private to avoid harassment.