Your Twitter password was probably exposed


It's time to think up another nonsensical combination of capital letters, special symbols, and random numbers.
Twitter announced in a blog post Thursday that a glitch had caused users' passwords to be revealed in plain text in its internal systems. The bug has been fixed, Twitter said, but "out of an abundance of caution" it is recommending that users consider changing their account passwords. "Our investigation shows no indication of breach or misuse by anyone," the company added.
The social network explained that user passwords are obscured from internal view using a tool known as bcrypt, which replaces passwords with random arrangements of numbers and letters. A glitch resulted in the passwords being written in their actual state in an internal log.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
"We found this error ourselves," Twitter clarified, and the service has already removed all passwords from its internal logs. Twitter has more than 330 million users worldwide. Read the company's full announcement here.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Kimberly Alters is the news editor at TheWeek.com. She is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
-
August 24 editorial cartoons
Cartoons Sunday's political cartoons include Putin at Donald Trump's circus, gallons of whitewash, and a foldable cartoon
-
5 Post Office-approved cartoons about mail-in voting
Cartoons Artists take on reverse logic, Putin's election advice, and more
-
The battle of the weight-loss drugs
Talking Point Can Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly regain their former stock market glory? A lot is riding on next year's pills
-
New York court tosses Trump's $500M fraud fine
Speed Read A divided appeals court threw out a hefty penalty against President Trump for fraudulently inflating his wealth
-
Trump said to seek government stake in Intel
Speed Read The president and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan reportedly discussed the proposal at a recent meeting
-
US to take 15% cut of AI chip sales to China
Speed Read Nvidia and AMD will pay the Trump administration 15% of their revenue from selling artificial intelligence chips to China
-
NFL gets ESPN stake in deal with Disney
Speed Read The deal gives the NFL a 10% stake in Disney's ESPN sports empire and gives ESPN ownership of NFL Network
-
Samsung to make Tesla chips in $16.5B deal
Speed Read Tesla has signed a deal to get its next-generation chips from Samsung
-
FCC greenlights $8B Paramount-Skydance merger
Speed Read The Federal Communications Commission will allow Paramount to merge with the Hollywood studio Skydance
-
Tesla reports plummeting profits
Speed Read The company may soon face more problems with the expiration of federal electric vehicle tax credits
-
Dollar faces historic slump as stocks hit new high
Speed Read While stocks have recovered post-Trump tariffs, the dollar has weakened more than 10% this year