On Monday Google announced that it’s shutting down Google+ 4 months earlier than expected.
The underperforming social network was already expected to be shuttered in August 2019, but new revelations of a data breach compromising the personal information of 52 million users has sped up the process.
Google will end the consumer version of Google+ four months early in April 2019 in addition to shutting down all Google+ APIs in the next 90 days.
An investigation revealed personal information including name, email address, occupation, and age were exposed through apps that requested permission to view user profiles, even with a profile set to private.
Personal user data including name, email address, encrypted password, and public questions, answers, and comments were exposed in the breach. Anonymous content was not affected.
“We understand that our ability to build reliable products that protect your data drives user trust,” wrote the VP of product management for G Suite David Thacker in a blog post. “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.
In October, Google disclosed plans to end Google+ in August 2019 after discovering a similar issue affecting 500,000 users.
The most data breach did not impact any financial data, national identification numbers, or passwords.
