Due to a bug, your Twitter Fleets may be viewable past the 24-hour window

Twitter rolled out Fleets recently, bringing Instagram Story-like features to the social network. While one could argue that tweets serve the same purpose, we’re not here for that discussion. Instead, today, we’re going to be looking at a bug that allows anyone to access old Fleets past their expiration date.

Basically, if you had a little time and the most basic of technical know-how, you could use Twitter’s developer API  to “access and download a user’s fleets without triggering a notification that the user’s fleet had been read and by whom,” according to the original TechCrunch report. This method would basically give you a URL for the Fleet that you could access directly, skipping the part where Twitter notes which users viewed the Fleet.

Users on Twitter have also been bringing this to light, explaining how easy it would be for someone to scrape old and new Fleets without triggering any kind of alert. With how creepy people can be and the fact that these stories are supposed to disappear before being erased from the internet, you can see the problem here.

https://twitter.com/donk_enby/status/1329935540049817600

Twitter tells TechCrunch that a fix is on the way: “We’re aware of a bug accessible through a technical workaround where some Fleets media URLs may be accessible after 24 hours. We are working on a fix that should be rolled out shortly.”

The company also acknowledges that it stores Fleets for over 24 hours on the server. That time could be extended if Twitter feels the Fleet violates any rules.

What do you think? Surprised Twitter had this issue with Fleets? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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