Twitter is today advising its 330 million users to change their passwords after it was revealed a glitch exposed passwords, usually encrypted in the system, in plain text.
The company says none of the passwords were exposed to the outside world or misused.
But Twitter says users should still change their password out of an “abundance of caution”.
The problem occurred during the “hashing” process which disguises user passwords with random characters to make them unreadable to the naked eye.
But the system error caused the passwords to be saved in plain text to an internal system instead of using the hashing process.
Once Twitter discovered the issue, it removed the passwords immediately and corrected the fault in the system to ensure it never happens again.
Anyone logging into the social network today would have seen a pop-up message explaining this recent security issue.
Part of the message read: “Out of an abundance of caution, we ask that you consider changing your password on all services where you use this password.”
The message was followed by a link to the support page which explained how a user could change their password.
Twitter has not revealed how many passwords were exposed in this way but, after asking all of its users to consider changing their password, it must have been a substantial number.
To change your password, go to Settings and Privacy and click on Passwords in the left column.
From here you need to enter your existing password and then type in your new password and re-type the new password to verify it.