Twitter agrees to deal with FTC

Microblogging giant Twitter has agreed to a deal with the US Federal Trade Commission regarding claims it put customer privacy at risk.

The FTC announced the settlement, which includes a provision for Twitter to create an independently audited security program.

It said in an announcement that between January and May 2009, hackers were “able to view non-public user information, gain access to direct messages and protected tweets, and reset any user’s password”.

Twitter said that 45 accounts were accessed by hackers for a short period of time. It also said that the January attack in 2009 was caused by “unauthorised joke tweets”.