Twitter May Have Used Your Phone Numbers For Ads

(RTTNews) - Social networking giant Twitter Inc. (TWTR), has revealed that email addresses and phone numbers uploaded by users to meet the company's security requirements may have been "inadvertently" used for advertising purposes.

"This was an error and we apologize," the company said in a statement. The company said it has addressed the issue as of September 17. However, it is not sure how many people were impacted by this security flaw.

"We're very sorry this happened and are taking steps to make sure we don't make a mistake like this again."

"We recently found that some email addresses and phone numbers provided for account security may have been used unintentionally for advertising purposes. This is no longer happening and we wanted to give you more clarity around the situation," the social networking giant tweeted on its official handle.

The security problem was caused by tailored audiences program, which allows companies to target advertisements against their own marketing lists, such as phone numbers and email addresses. Twitter found that when advertisers uploaded their marketing lists, it matched Twitter users to the phone numbers and email addresses users submitted to set up two-factor authentication on their account.