Google Plus to Shutter Early Due to Second Data Breach

As a result of the latest breach, the company now plans to shutter Google Plus by April 2019, and cease access to its APIs in the next 90 days.

• By Jessica Davis
• Dec 12, 2018

Google will be shutting down its social network, Google Plus, earlier than previously announced due to the discovery of a new security vulnerability affecting 52.5 million users. The latest data breach is the second Google Plus security issue disclosed by Google in three months.

In early October, Google disclosed a security bug that had exposed the account information of 500,000 users, including names, email addresses and jobs. Google said at the time that it planned to shut down the social network by August 2019.

On Monday, Google disclosed in a blog post that a second security bug had been discovered. The vulnerability allowed 52.5 million users’ profile information, even if it was set to private, to be viewed by developers using one of the company’s application programming interfaces for six days in November. Again, the vulnerable data included names, email addresses, jobs and ages of users.

According to Google, third-party apps did not have access to users’ financial data or passwords due to the bug, and the company didn’t find any evidence that the private information was accessed or misused. But as a result of the latest breach, the company now plans to shutter Google Plus by April 2019, and cease access to its APIs in the next 90 days.

“We understand that our ability to build reliable products that protect your data drives user trust,” Google’s blog post read.

“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.”