Using SwiftKey? Your details were leaked to hackers

A SwiftKey user recently discovered when the app suggested a stranger’s email address as prediction. Another one reported getting predictions in a language they’d never spoken. This led to much speculation among both, users as well as Microsoft – the owner of SwiftKey.

One SwiftKey user found their details to be compromised when a stranger emailed them to say that a brand new phone has suggested their email address when logging into an account. ‘A few days ago, I received an email from a complete stranger asking if I had recently purchased and returned a particular model of mobile phone, adding that not one but two of my email addresses (one personal and one work address) were saved on the phone she had just bought as brand-new,’ said the user. 

A Reddit user even complained that after resetting their phone and reinstalling SwiftKey, they were suggested German words which have never been used before. ‘It's bad enough to lose a trilingual dictionary built over almost four years. Now I'm also worrying about someone getting all my suggestions,’ said the user.

A spokesperson for SwiftKey said: ‘This week, a few of our customers noticed unexpected predictions where unfamiliar terms, and in some rare cases emails, appeared when using their mobile phone. We are working quickly to resolve this inconvenience.'

‘We have turned off the cloud sync service and are updating our applications to remove email address prediction. During this time, it will not be possible to back up your SwiftKey language model,' they concluded.