In a recent leak, Google’s security research team has found a bug that leaked the personal data of millions of users of Google +, and Google has announced the acceleration of terminating the social network earlier next year. The breach was a turnover of the personal details like name, email and occupation and financial data like national identification numbers or passwords or credit card information is kept safe. Google+ was launched in 2011 as a social networking space, which will shut down owing to an earlier breach of data of users. This is the second data breach of Google+ network. The first was in October where the data of 500,000 user’s data were compromised.
David Thacker, Google’s vice president of product management, said in a statement to the media - “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.”
Google found this bug in its API during a standard testing procedure and stated that there is no evidence that the app developers who had access to it for 6 days have misused it in any manner. The Google+ network shutdown is to happen in the next 90 days.
Google notes, “apps with access to a user’s Google+ profile data also had access to the profile data that had been shared with the consenting user by another Google+ user,” even when this data was not shared publicly on the platform.”
The service was Google’s fourth foray into social networking after Orkut, Google Buzz and Google Friend Connect. It experiences considerable growth in its incubation period. Google had announced the shutdown in October 2018, citing reasons as low engagement and software error, which was first reported by The Wall street Journal. Google + will see a complete shutdown in April 2019.
