Google Shuts Down Google Plus Ahead of Schedule Because of Security Bug

Google Plus shutting down earlier than expected

The online virtual ghost town known as Google Plus is being shut down ahead of schedule after engineers discovered a new security bug that exposed the personal information of 52.5 million users, the company announced Monday. 

In a blog post, Google wrote that its security team had discovered a second bug that would allow the profile information of up to 52.5 million users to be viewable by developers - even if the user's profile was set to private. The bug exposed users' information for six days in November. 

"We’ve recently determined that some users were impacted by a software update introduced in November that contained a bug affecting a Google+ API." Google wrote. "We discovered this bug as part of our standard and ongoing testing procedures and fixed it within a week of it being introduced."

The bug didn't allow any third-party apps to gain access to users' financial data or password, and said they didn't discover any evidence that the private profile information had been accessed or misused. 

Google did say that the company plans on shutting down their social network by April and all access to its APIs in the next 90 days. 

Google first announced they were shutting down Google Plus back in October after a security bug exposed the account information of 500,000 users. That issue exposed users' names, email addresses, and occupations. At the time, Google wrote they planned on shutting the social network down by August 2019. 

"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 company wrote. 

"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.

"We will never stop our work to build privacy protections that work for everyone," the company said in its blog post. 

Photo: Getty Images


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