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Google+ Shuts Down Early After Another Major Data Breach

Article by diogo@techpatrol.com.au
December 11, 2018

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Not long ago we posted an article titled ‘The end of Google+” where we stated how the tech giants were shutting down their struggling social media network moments after revealing major data breaches during the Facebook Cambridge analytica scandal. Google has now revealed that Google+ has suffered another massive data breach and will be shutting down the platform 4 months ahead of schedule.

The tech giants have discovered another critical security vulnerability in one of Google+’s People APIs that could have allowed 3rd party developers to steal private information of over 52.5Million users. 

What information could have been taken? 

  • Full Names
  • Email Addresses
  • Occupation
  • Age
  • Passwords
  • Financial Data
  • National Identification Numbers (U.S)

The vulnerable API is the “People:get” that was initially designed to let developers request basic information associated with a users profile. 

The Google engineering team discovered the security breach during a standard testing procedure and addressed it within a week of the vulnerability being discovered.

Now a positive thing is that Google is claiming that no one has exploited the vulnerability and users data has not been exploited. 

“No third party compromised our systems, and we have no evidence that the app developers that inadvertently had this access for six days were aware of it or misused it in any way,” 

Google Stated.

Google also assured it’s users that no passwords, financial data, national identification numbers or any other sensitive data were left exposed by this API bug.

Now this scare has been the final nail in the coffin. Instead of shutting down the struggling platform in August 2019, the company is moving this up to April 2019. 

If you have used Google+ in the past you can click here and type your email to see if your email has been hacked and if is circulating in the wild. 

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