The Google+ social network inadvertently gave app developers access to information on some 52.5 million users — even data that users designated as private — because of a “bug” in its software, Google says. The company had already announced it was pulling the plug on the social network because of an earlier incident, and now says the shutdown will happen four months sooner.
Users’ name, birth date, email address, work history and other information were exposed for nearly a week in November, Google says in a blog post about the privacy flaw.
Google announced in October that it was closing the consumer version of Google+ because of a vulnerability that left nearly 500,000 accounts exposed reportedly from 2015 to March 2018, as well as the fact that it had failed to catch on.
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