Vine Users’ Phone Numbers, Email Addresses Were Briefly Exposed, Twitter Reveals

If you might remember, Twitter converted Vine into a dedicated camera app earlier this year. Shortly after, the company made Vine Archive live to help users see all Vines available on the site since 2013. While this was a noble idea in theory, it turns out that a bug that affected the Vine Archive potentially exposed the phone numbers and email addresses associated with Vine accounts to third-parties in certain conditions.

Twitter has clarified that the bug in question affected the Vine Archive for less than 24 hours and has since been fixed. The social media company says that it has already notified all affected account holders for whom it had a verified email address on file, so if you weren’t notified, you most likely weren’t affected.

“While we have no information indicating that any user information impacted by this incident has been misused, it’s always a good idea to be cautious of emails or text messages received from unknown senders,” the company said.
To recall, Twitter announced in October last year that it would be discontinuing it video-sharing mobile app Vine as a cost-cutting measure. There were reports that the company was considering a sale of the service instead of discontinuation but Twitter went ahead to convert the app into Vine Camera on January 17.

In the Vine Archive, users can search for the Vines either by the year that they were uploaded or by their category. The categories mentioned on the site include Animals, Art, Comedy, Edits, Music & Dance, Sports, and Weird. Users can also choose to browse the Vines through categories Editor’s Picks, and Playlists such as “Do It For The Vine”, “Bruh”, and others. Users can also search for their favourite Vines by searching the name of their creator’s user name in the community section.