New Bug Forces Google To Shut Down Google+ Four Months Earlier Than Initially Planned

Google was supposed to shut down Google+ in August 2019 after major user data exposure, as well as minimal consumer interest but it looks like the social network won’t rest without one final tantrum.

According to a blog post, Google stated that 52.5 million users were affected by another bug, which allowed developers to access the information on the users’ profile which had not been marked as public. The data was free to access for no less than six whole days.

The issue was detected during regular tests, was fixed in a week and Google assured the users that the system had not been compromised by a third party.

This might not be such a big issue if Google wouldn’t have faced the same problem back in March – a bug which was only disclosed in October and which allowed developers to access profile data like usernames, email addresses, occupations and other details and overall affected 500,000 accounts.

This makes it the second time in just as many months that Google+ has experienced privacy issues and the company has decided to completely shut down the social media network earlier than planned, moving up the date to April 2019.  Additionally, API access for developers will also be shut down in the next 90 days.