Google will shut down consumer version of Google+ earlier due to a bug

Google announced it will close the consumer version of Google+ before than originally planned due to the discovery of a new security flaw.

Google will close the consumer version of Google+ in April, four months earlier than planned. According to G Suite product management vice president David Thacker. the company will maintain only a version designed for businesses. Google will shut down the Application programming interface programs (APIs) used by developers to access Google+ data within 90 days, due to the discovery of a bug.

“We’ve recently determined that some users were impacted by a software update introduced in November that contained a bug affecting a Google+ API.” wrote David Thacker.

“We discovered this bug as part of our standard and ongoing testing procedures and fixed it within a week of it being introduced. 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 new flaw was introduced with a software update in November and it was discovered during routine testing and quickly fixed by the experts of the company.

Thacker pointed out that the protection of Google users is a priority for the firm and for this reason all Google+ APIs will be shut-down soon.

“With the discovery of this new bug, we have decided to expedite the shut-down of all Google+ APIs,” Thacker said.

“While we recognize there are implications for developers, we want to ensure the protection of our users.”

According to Google, the vulnerability affected approximately 52.5 million users, allowing applications to see profile information such as name, occupation, age, and email address even if access was set to private.

Google initially announced plans to shut down Google+ after discovered 
a bug that exposed private data in as many as 500,000 accounts

At the time, there was no evidence that developers had taken advantage of the flaw.

Google is in the process of notifying any enterprise customers that were impacted by this flaw.

“A list of impacted users in those domains is being sent to system administrators, and we will reach out again if any additional impacted users or issues are discovered.” concludes Thacker. 

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs –Google+, social network)

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