Google has announced that it will shut down its unpopular Google+ platform four months earlier than scheduled due to a second data breach was discovered in November which exposed 52.5 million users’ information.
Google had originally planned to shut the semi-defunct social media platform down in August 2019, now it has been moved up to April.
In a company blog, Google admitted that a software update exposed users’ data including names, email addresses, occupations, genders, birthdates, and ages, between November 7 and November 13 — whether they were set to public or not — to developers using the Google+ API.
The data was made available by the update to developers using Google+ API, which Google has said it will shut down within 90 days.
Sundar Pichai, Google CEO
“No third party compromised our systems, and we have no evidence that the app developers that inadvertently had this access for six days were aware of it or misused it in any way.”
The tech company has stated that the bug has been resolved and Google will contact those whose information has been exposed.
This latest breach will do little to assure users of Google’s resolve to protect data as they state in their blog post:
“We understand that our ability to build reliable products that protect your data drives user trust. We have always taken this seriously, and we continue to invest in our privacy programs to refine internal privacy review processes, create powerful data controls, and engage with users, researchers, and policymakers to get their feedback and improve our programs.”
In October, Google announced it would be shutting down Google+ after a Wall Street Journal report revealed that a major security bug caused Google+ to expose the personal profile data of around half a million Google+ users.
