Google to shut down Google+ after failing to disclose user data breach

Istanbul, Oct 9 (DHA) - Tech giant Google announced it will be closing down the consumer version of Google+ in the coming months as it disclosed a privacy bug. "The consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement. 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds" Google said in a statement.
Google has said that its social network Google+ will be shut down after it was discovered that a bug exposed private data of up to 500,000 users to external developers.
The announcement was made by Ben Smith, Google Fellow and vice-president of engineering, in a blog post, in which he noted that the Indian-American headed company could not confirm which users were impacted by the bug.
“However, we ran a detailed analysis over the two weeks prior to patching the bug, and from that analysis, the profiles of up to 500,000 Google+ accounts were potentially affected. Our analysis showed that up to 438 applications may have used this Application programming interface (API)” he said.
“We found no evidence that any developer was aware of this bug, or abusing the API, and we found no evidence that any profile data was misused” Smith said.
The technical bug was detected as part of an effort called Project Strobe started by Google early this year. It is a root-and-branch review of third-party developer access to Google accounts and Android device data and of our philosophy around apps’ data access, he wrote.