San Francisco, Sep 22 : A bug in Twitter's platform for third-party app developers exposed some Direct Messages (DMs) from nearly 3 million users to outsiders, the micro-blogging platform has admitted.

The bug ran from May 2017 and within hours of discovering it on September 10, Twitter said it fixed the bug to prevent data from being unintentionally sent to the incorrect developer.

"The bug affected less than 1 per cent of people on Twitter. The bug may have caused some of these interactions to be unintentionally sent to another registered developer," Twitter said in a blog post on Saturday.

"In some cases, this may have included certain DMs or protected tweets, for example a Direct Message with an airline that had authorised an Account Activity API (AAAPI) developer."

The Account Activity API allows registered developers to build tools to better support businesses and their communications with customers on Twitter.

Twitter currently has over 336 million users and one per cent means nearly 3 million of those were affected. If your business authorised a developer using the AAAPI to access your account, the bug may have impacted your activity data in error.

"We're very sorry this happened. If your account was affected by this bug, we will contact you directly through an in-app notice and on twitter.com," said the company.

In May, the micro-blogging platform asked its 336 million users to change their password across its services after it discovered a bug that stored passwords in plain text in an internal system.

Twitter said it found no sign that hackers accessed the exposed data but advised users that they should enter a new password on all services where their current password has been used.


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New Delhi, Oct 24: The sports ministry on Thursday announced the discontinuation of the Dhyan Chand Award for lifetime achievement from this year onwards and the introduction of the Arjuna Award Lifetime in its place in a bid to "rationalise" the various sporting honours of the country.

Instituted in 2002, the Dhyan Chand Lifetime Award, named after hockey wizard Major Dhyan Chand, is given to individuals in disciplines that are part of the Olympic Games, Paralympic Games, Asian Games and Commonwealth Games, among others.

In 2023, the award was given to former shuttler Manjusha Kanwar, ex-hockey exponent Vineet Kumar and kabaddi player Kavitha Selvaraj.

"The various schemes for sports awards have been rationalised wherein Arjuna Award (Lifetime) has been introduced in place of Dhyan Chand Award. To recognise the efforts of coaches at grassroots/development level, they are now eligible for the Dronacharya Award," said a ministry statement.

"The Arjuna Award (Lifetime) has been introduced and will be given for life time contribution to sports development.

"Further, to recognize the Khelo India scheme, the Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad (MAKA) Trophy will be given to the University for Overall Top Performance in Khelo India University Games," it added.

The last date for applying for the national sports awards for 2024 is November 14.