Huawei Clarifies It Is Not Auto-Deleting Twitter Images From Smartphones

Huawei has responded to a number of users reports that popped up online this week, clarifying that the company is not deleting the photos downloaded from Twitter from anyone's smartphones. The company noted that it was a glitch in the system that showed an incorrect notification to select users of two specific Twitter for Android builds and their photos are safe in another folder on the phone. The Chinese smartphone maker remarked that it is working with Twitter to further resolve the matter.

According to a report in Tech Radar, a Taiwanese website Apple Daily was the first to write about the concerns of some Huawei smartphone users in China, who had claimed that the company was deleting any photos downloaded from Twitter from their phones. The fears of a backdoor in Huawei phones was also raised. The user reports then started popping up on Reddit, with one user claiming that he was facing the same problem on his Honor phone as well.

The Chinese smartphone maker then released a statement noting that it has investigated the issue and whenever the Huawei phone users with two specifics builds of Twitter for Android download any photos from the social network's app, the Twitter app immediately copied the image to another folder and deleted it from phone's gallery. This action triggered the notification from the smartphone telling the users about deletion, which had caused the panic.

“Having investigated the issue, Huawei has discovered that whenever users of certain devices download an image using specific builds of the Twitter app (version 7.78.0 and 7.77.0), the app will automatically create a folder of the same name as the image and promptly delete it in the background,” Huawei told Tech Radar.

“This action triggers Huawei's built-in image protection alert, causing the system to notify the user of the deletion. However, the images are not affected. Users may find their images at the following location: File Manager/picture/Twitter,” the company added. The company said it is "currently in conversation with Twitter to resolve this issue as soon as possible."

It is unclear at this point if Huawei will be releasing a software update to address the problem or Twitter is going to update its app. If you are facing a similar issue on your Huawei smartphone, feel free to ignore the system notification and you will be able to find your downloaded photos in the Picture/ Twitter folder on your phone.