Twitter revealed on Monday that a bug in its iOS app - which it has fixed - had caused users’ location data to be collected, even if the users had not chosen to share the data. The company said it accidentally shared this data with one of its partners. It did not name the partner, but said the bug had affected iOS users who used more than one Twitter account. “If you opted into using the precise location feature in one account, we may have accidentally collected location data when you were using any other account(s),” the company wrote. Twitter said this information was then shared with one of its partners during an advertising process known as real-time bidding. The company said it had intended to remove location data from the fields but “this removal did not happen as planned”. Twitter said, however, that it had “fuzzed” the data so that it was no more precise than zip code or city (5 km squared). This meant it could not be used to determine an address or map precise movements. “We have confirmed with our partner that the location data has not been retained and that it only existed in their systems for a short time, and was then deleted as part of their normal process,” Twitter wrote. Twitter has been operating under a consent decree by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) since June 2010, when it settled an investigation into its lax security practices and protection of user accounts after two…
