Google Plus has witnessed another data bug, and the company has now decided to close the social network earlier than initially planned. The service will now shut down in April next year instead of August 2019, according to Google.
The company confirms that the new data leak has affected a whopping 52.5 million users. The bug may have compromised personal user information such as their name, email address, profession, and age, even if they set their profile to ‘private’.
“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 Plus from August 2019 to April 2019. While we recognize there are implications for developers, we want to ensure the protection of our users,” said Google in a blog post.
No misuse so far
The bug was discovered in Google Plus API, and the company assures that its API will stop functioning within 90 days. Google, however, suggests there’s no evidence of the vulnerability being misused so far. The company also asserts that the bug has been patched now, and users can safely use the service until April.
To recall, a similar security bug was found in Google Plus back in October, which exposed users private and personal data to developers for as many as three years. The vulnerability was discovered in March this year, though Google did not publicly acknowledge the issue up until October. Following the public reveal, Google announced its plans to shut down Google+ for consumers, which has since struggled to attract users.
However, with the latest bug, Google states it found the leak by itself which was live only for a period of six days. Google also says it’s begun informing users and business customers who may have been impacted by the latest vulnerability.
