Twitch Glitch Exposed Some Users' Private Messages

Twitch is warning users of a bug in one of its recently retired features that may have exposed some of their messages to other users.

"On May 5, 2018, Twitch removed a legacy feature called Messages and provided  users the ability to download an archive of past messages," the game streaming company informed users via emails last week.

"Due to a bug in the code that generated the message archive files, which we have since fixed, a small percentage of messages were included in the wrong archives," Twitch added. "As a result, some users who downloaded their message bundle may have one or more of your messages in their archive."

Twitch said the issue only affected Twitch Messages, and there were no private messages sent via the Twitch Whisper systems included in these archives.

Bleeping Computer obtained a copy of the email sent by Twitch last week to users:

Users can visit twitch.tv/messages/archive and see if Twitch has accidentally included one or more of their messages with other people's archives.

A Twitch spokesperson was not available to comment on the issue. Nonetheless, a quick Twitter search revealed that quite a few Twitch users found messages in their archive belonging to other users.

Some messages contained nonsense, while others contained quite sensitive information.

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

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

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 (@PyroInsane) August 16, 2018

I got this too. Super unnerving, especially considering so many broadcasters used Messages to communicate in regard to giveaways and mailing information.

— Meg Kaylee (@Meg_Kaylee) August 17, 2018

BIG YIKES for @twitch . looks like mine was only 3 messages about a teamspeak from 2015, but daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayum. pic.twitter.com/Xyo1sJ7S3x

— ℓιηz (@linzbot_) August 16, 2018

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, solid (@kaitly_n) August 16, 2018

Twitch is a live streaming video platform owned by Twitch Interactive, a subsidiary of Amazon. The service launched in 2011 as a spin-off to video streaming platform Justin.tv and currently has over 140 million monthly active users.