• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, June 24, 2010

Twitter agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that security lapses allowed hackers to gain access to tweets users had marked as private, the FTC announced today.

"A company that allows consumers to designate their information as private must use reasonable security to uphold such designations," David Vladeck, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement. "Likewise Consumers who use social networking sites may choose to share some information with others, but they still have a right to expect that their personal information will be kept private and secure."