Twitter has revealed that it has fixed a Privacy Settings issue for users of its Android app, some five years after the problem first manifested itself.

In a  post in its Help Centre, the company revealed that it had become aware of an issue in Twitter for Android that disabled the “Protect your Tweets” setting if certain account changes were made.

“You may have been impacted by this issue if you had protected Tweets turned on in your settings, used Twitter for Android, and made certain changes to account settings such as changing the email address associated with your account between November 3, 2014, and January 14, 2019” the post says.

So effectively, a Twitter for Android user who had ‘Protect Your Tweets’ turned on, so thought their tweets were only being seen by people they had approved, but who subsequently changed the email address associated with their account, could have been tweeting publicly, without realising it, for anything up to the past five years.

The post confirms that Twitter fixed the issue on January 14 (2019) and says it will provide updates if other important information becomes available. It also says that it has informed people it knows were affected by the issue and has turned “Protect your Tweets” back on for them if it was disabled.

“We recognize and appreciate the trust you place in us, and are committed to earning that trust every day,” the post says. “We’re very sorry this happened and we’re conducting a full review to help prevent this from happening again.”