TWITTER URGES OVER 300 MILLION USERS TO CHANGE THEIR PASSWORDS.

The social media site said it found no sign that hackers accessed the exposed data, but advised users to change their passwords to be safe.
Twitter practice is to store passwords encrypted, or “hashed,” so they are masked to even people inside the company, Twitter chief technology officer Parag Agrawal explained in a blog post.
“Due to a bug, passwords were written to an internal log before completing the hashing process,” he said.
“We found this error ourselves, removed the passwords, and are implementing plans to prevent this bug from happening again.”
The San Francisco-based internet company did not specify how many passwords were exposed or how long the glitch made data vulnerable to snooping.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we ask that you consider changing your password on all services where you’ve used this password,” Agrawal told users.
“We are very sorry this happened,” he said.
The stumble comes as the sector faces intense scrutiny over the protection of personal data online, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal which saw information from tens of millions of Facebook users hijacked and misused.
Twitter shares ebbed about a percent to $30.36 in after-market trades that followed word of the password mishap.

Better to change

Going public with a security slip and getting users to take precautions is preferable to remaining mum and hoping no data was taken, according to independent technology industry analyst Rob Enderle.
“When in doubt, it is better to have people change passwords than to be wrong,” Enderle said.
“With security, it is always better to err on the side of caution.”
The analyst thought it unlikely people would abandon Twitter simply for being asked to change passwords.