Google+ to shut ahead of schedule as bug potentially exposes 52.5m user data

Google is shutting down Google+ ahead of schedule from August 2019 to April 2019, following the discovery of a bug that potentially exposes 52.5 million users' data. In October, Google had first announced that it’d be “sunsetting the consumer version” of Google+ and APIs because of the “significant challenges involved in maintaining” the product, and of course the low usage.In a blogpost yesterday, David Thacker VP, product management, G Suite said that in October, said, “We’ve recently determined that some users were impacted by a software update introduced in November that contained a bug affecting a Google+ API. We discovered this bug as part of our standard and ongoing testing procedures and fixed it within a week of it being introduced.”He added that no third party compromised the systems, and there has been 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 bug did not give developers access to information such as financial data, national identification numbers, passwords, or similar data typically used for fraud or identity theft, Thacker dded.“With the discovery of this new bug, we have decided to expedite the shut-down of all Google+ APIs; this will occur within the next 90 days. In addition, we have also decided to accelerate the sunsetting of consumer Google+ from August 2019 to April 2019. While we recognise there are implications for developers, we want to ensure the protection of our users,” he said.Google has since begun the process of notifying consumer users and enterprise customers that were impacted by this bug. “Our investigation is ongoing as to any potential impact to other Google+ APIs,” he added.“We want to give users ample opportunity to transition off of consumer Google+, and over the coming months, we will continue to provide users with additional information, including ways they can safely and securely download and migrate their data,” he added.