This is not a breach. Stop fear mongering.

A tweet from twittown tonight stating “Twitter Facebook private accounts breach” with a link to their post which references this story at Twitter Facts was a tad misleading in my opionion. When I first saw the tweet I rushed to read the story since I had spent a good part of the day Twittering from Facebook and was immediately concerned some baddie would now have my personal information. After reading the posts involved, I was relieved it was mostly just a case of fear mongering. Let me explain the issue:

Apparently when you add your Twitter feed including your Twitter posts to Facebook, it shows it to all friends who have Facebook account permission to see your profile regardless of your Twitter account settings marking your Twitter profile “protected”.

Now, I would like to explain how the “protected” Twitter accounts work. If you sign up for Twitter via SMS on your phone your updates are automatically protected from people who are not your friends unless you change the setting. If you sign up via the web you have the option of protecting your updates. All this means is that people who have NOT added you cannot see your tweets. On Twitter you do not have to approve follower requests and people an add you to their hearts content. If you find this offensive, you may in turn block people who add you if you don’t approve of them but none of this is automatic. Making your tweets protected is not the same as if they were “private”.

If you add your Twitterfeed to Facebook it is to share your Twitter messages with people who have access to see your profile and typically these are people you have approved to be your friends. Your Facebook account has given Twitter permission to add these updates from your Twitter account to your Facebook profile. Twitter only has access to your information you gave it permission for when you added the application. Twitter on YOUR Facebook profile does NOT require viewers to login to Twitter to see your updates. This would be pretty silly and a huge hassle and make the application essentially worthless. Therefore it is assumed that if you add your Twitterfeed to your Facebook profile, you don’t mind if all your approved friends have access to see your tweets. Am I sounding redundant yet?

This “accounts breach” or “Twitter Privacy Issue” is not really an issue at all and the application is working as I would hope it is designed to. Don’t panic but please do take the time to understand how the technologies work before using them.