Some Twitch Bleeping Computer Users’ Private Messages Were Exposed As a Result of a Glitch

By Michael Head On Apr 15, 2022 0

Streaming service Twitch is alerting customers to a flaw in one of its recently decommissioned services that may have exposed some of their private communications to other users.

Last week, Twitch sent out letters to its subscribers informing them that the game streaming firm has discontinued a legacy function known as Messages and had made it possible for them to download an archive of previous messages.

A small number of messages were incorrectly archived as a result of an error in the code that generated the message archive files, which has subsequently been resolved, Twitch explained. “We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.” The outcome is that some people who have downloaded their message bundle may have one or more of your messages in their archive as a result of this.”

In a statement, Twitch stated that the problem only affected Twitch Messages and that no private messages transmitted through the Twitch Whisper services were included in these archives.

at first when i saw my twitch messages were mistakenly sent to other users i was p concerned

so i checked and saw it was just this one.

if anything i should thank @twitch. in fact, everyone can have this message. i’m happy to serve as an example of banning that shit in 2014. 😎 pic.twitter.com/7ezHlt0t2y

— kaitlyn 🇨🇦 (@kaitlyn_sc2) August 16, 2018

Only 1 of mine was miss-delivered, and it was not sensitive information. Really hope that there’s nothing out there that’s an issue for folks. :S

— Blaine ‘Pyro’ Biehle: Dad Edition (@PyroInsane) August 16, 2018

I had an ENTIRE FOLDER of incorrectly delivered messages. It was all old information to Rocket League/LoL games and my retired Snapchat, so thankfully nothing current, but y’all, double-check if you got that email.

— Elspeth Eastman (@ElspethEastman) August 16, 2018

One of my messages was from a user to me who won a giveaway. Their full name and address is listed with their username. I wonder how many other people got this?

— MikeTheBard (@MikeTheBard) August 17, 2018

The following email was stolen by Bleeping Computer and distributed to Twitch users last week:
If Twitch has unintentionally included one or more of a user’s messages with other people’s archives, users can check twitch.tv/messages/archive to discover if this has happened to them.

A spokeswoman for Twitch was not immediately available to comment on the situation. Nonetheless, a short search on Twitter indicated that a significant number of Twitch users discovered messages in their archive that belonged to other people.