Google+ to shut following leak of 500,000 users’ private data

THE FIRM SAID IT HAD DISCOVERED, PATCHED THE LEAK IN MARCH

BENGALURU/SAN FRANCISCO: Google will shut down the consumer version of its social network Google+ after announcing data from up to 500,000 users may have been exposed to external developers by a bug that was present for more than two years in its systems.

The company said in a blog on Monday it had discovered and patched the leak in March of this year and had no evidence of misuse of user data or that any developer was aware or had exploited the vulnerability. Shares of its parent company Alphabet Inc, however, were down 1.5% at $1150.75 in response to what was the latest in a run of privacy issues to hit the United States’ big tech companies.

The Wall Street Journal

reported earlier that Google had opted not to disclose the issue with its Application Program Interfaces (API) partly due to fears of regulatory scrutiny, citing unnamed sources and internal documents.

Google said it had reviewed the issue, looking at the type of data involved, whether it could accurately identify the users to inform, whether there was any evidence of misuse, and whether there were any actions a developer or user could take.

Google said a software glitch in the social site gave outside developers potential access to private Google+ profile data between a major redesign in 2015 and March 2018, when internal investigators discovered and fixed the issue.

The affected data was limited to static, optional Google+ Profile fields including name, email address, occupation, gender and age.