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Twitter (X) Hit by Data Leak of 2.8B Users – Allegedly an Insider Job

115 points by CHEF-KOCH 2y ago

robertlagrant 2y ago
Tl;dr: - probably all the data isn't from X - the data seems to be all public - e.g. - user ID and screen name - number of followers - number of tweets - source of last Tweet (e.g. TweetDeck) - location and timezone - profile is protected or verified I'm not sure that headline is very sensible to propagate.
- ironhaven 2y ago
  The posting client was removed from the UI and has not been public for a while
  - tech234a 2y ago
    Yes it was removed the UI, but if you browse Twitter with developer tools open to the Network tab you can still find the posting client in the API response JSON when viewing a Tweet.
  - sReinwald 2y ago
    That's not quite correct. It is no longer visible on the website itself, or within the mobile clients. But if you inspect the requests, you can still see things like source: <a href="http://twitter.com/download/iphone" rel="nofollow">Twitter for iPhone</a> which shows the tweet was posted from iOS.
  - areyourllySorry 2y ago
    torrent metadata says it's from 2022, before it was "removed" magnet:?xt=urn:btih:c963982c4ffa264fe76ec5918f83dd775521201b&dn=twitter_users_csv&tr=udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:80&tr=udp://tracker.opentrackr.org:1337/announce
- epoxia 2y ago
  The "alleged inside job" is pretty clearly clickbait. It could still be a bad leak if that information is for privated accounts as well.
jmclnx 2y ago
Oh No, what will a bot do ? Maybe we can find out what percentage of these users are either bots or an ID for use by AI. I wonder if the public is fully insensitive to these leaks now that we seem to have a big leak every other day.
ohgr 2y ago
Place bet: Musk investigates while shutting down any data protection agencies.
everfrustrated 2y ago
Article itself says >Their theory that a disgruntled employee leaked the data during the layoffs remains unconfirmed, and there’s no concrete evidence to support it; it is only a plausible hypothesis given the timing and internal mess at X.
renewiltord 2y ago
This is just information that was publicly visible previously. Someone could see almost all of this on old archive.org pages. The current UI hides some of it but it’s not like this is secret.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
skybrian 2y ago
Or you could use Bluesky where all the public data can be replicated, by design. Someone is working on showing how a live replica can be implemented on a Raspberry Pi. [1] (The scale is much smaller than Twitter, though.) Since it's public anyway, it's hard to say if being able to copy all the data is good or bad. There are tradeoffs. We allow it for a public git repo. Is social media different? [2]. [1] https://bsky.app/profile/why.bsky.team/post/3lkwg2djrfk23 https://bsky.app/profile/why.bsky.team/post/3lkwg2djrfk23 [2] The tree ring model of culture and politics - https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/03/29/treering.html https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/03/29/treering.html
yodsanklai 2y ago
[flagged]
philsquared_ 2y ago
Clickbait. Leak has irrelevant and useless data. Why anyone would bother to "steal" this data I have no clue. Almost all of it could be collected if you scraped the site over time.
- 3np 2y ago
  Registered account e-mail addresses are ~supposedly~ in the leak and not public. EDIT: That was apparently a mistake. Still, not all of the data in the dump is public or useless.
  - coverband 2y ago
    Not according to the article.
taimurkazmi 2y ago
2.8 billion accounts, 340 million users. If this leak proves that more than 80% of Twitter accounts are bots, it should cause some damage

115 points by CHEF-KOCH 2y ago

Tl;dr: - probably all the data isn't from X - the data seems to be all public - e.g. - user ID and screen name - number of followers - number of tweets - source of last Tweet (e.g. TweetDeck) - location and timezone - profile is protected or verified I'm not sure that headline is very sensible to propagate.

ironhaven 2y ago
The posting client was removed from the UI and has not been public for a while
- tech234a 2y ago
  Yes it was removed the UI, but if you browse Twitter with developer tools open to the Network tab you can still find the posting client in the API response JSON when viewing a Tweet.
- sReinwald 2y ago
  That's not quite correct. It is no longer visible on the website itself, or within the mobile clients. But if you inspect the requests, you can still see things like source: <a href="http://twitter.com/download/iphone" rel="nofollow">Twitter for iPhone</a> which shows the tweet was posted from iOS.
- areyourllySorry 2y ago
  torrent metadata says it's from 2022, before it was "removed" magnet:?xt=urn:btih:c963982c4ffa264fe76ec5918f83dd775521201b&dn=twitter_users_csv&tr=udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:80&tr=udp://tracker.opentrackr.org:1337/announce
epoxia 2y ago
The "alleged inside job" is pretty clearly clickbait. It could still be a bad leak if that information is for privated accounts as well.

jmclnx 2y ago

Oh No, what will a bot do ? Maybe we can find out what percentage of these users are either bots or an ID for use by AI. I wonder if the public is fully insensitive to these leaks now that we seem to have a big leak every other day.

ohgr 2y ago

Place bet: Musk investigates while shutting down any data protection agencies.

everfrustrated 2y ago

Article itself says >Their theory that a disgruntled employee leaked the data during the layoffs remains unconfirmed, and there’s no concrete evidence to support it; it is only a plausible hypothesis given the timing and internal mess at X.

renewiltord 2y ago

This is just information that was publicly visible previously. Someone could see almost all of this on old archive.org pages. The current UI hides some of it but it’s not like this is secret.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

skybrian 2y ago

Or you could use Bluesky where all the public data can be replicated, by design. Someone is working on showing how a live replica can be implemented on a Raspberry Pi. [1] (The scale is much smaller than Twitter, though.) Since it's public anyway, it's hard to say if being able to copy all the data is good or bad. There are tradeoffs. We allow it for a public git repo. Is social media different? [2]. [1] https://bsky.app/profile/why.bsky.team/post/3lkwg2djrfk23 https://bsky.app/profile/why.bsky.team/post/3lkwg2djrfk23 [2] The tree ring model of culture and politics - https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/03/29/treering.html https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/03/29/treering.html

yodsanklai 2y ago

[flagged]

philsquared_ 2y ago

Clickbait. Leak has irrelevant and useless data. Why anyone would bother to "steal" this data I have no clue. Almost all of it could be collected if you scraped the site over time.

3np 2y ago
Registered account e-mail addresses are ~supposedly~ in the leak and not public. EDIT: That was apparently a mistake. Still, not all of the data in the dump is public or useless.
- coverband 2y ago
  Not according to the article.

taimurkazmi 2y ago

2.8 billion accounts, 340 million users. If this leak proves that more than 80% of Twitter accounts are bots, it should cause some damage