After Facebook under the scanner for exposing its users’ data, now Google too shuts its app as it has reported a bug that threatened its users’ security.
The bug was detected in Google+.
On Monday, Google had announced that it “sunset” Google+ social network for consumers after 500000 users’ data was exposed.
But what is shocking is that Google had hidden that it was aware of the bug for 6 months.
Google did not initially disclose a Google+ security bug when it first discovered it this spring because it feared regulatory scrutiny and reputational damage.
Google found and repaired the software bug in March, according to a Google blog post-Monday. But the delay until October in revealing the incident could reignite long-standing complaints from federal and state officials that tech giants such as Google are reckless with user privacy and not forthcoming enough when breaches and other security incidents happen.
Google discovered the Google+ security bug in the same month that Silicon Valley rival Facebook was facing massive scrutiny over its role in allowing people affiliated with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica to collect data on 87 million users — an incident that led to demands that Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg testify on Capitol Hill. He did so in April.
Google announced in its blog post-Monday that it will mostly discontinue Google+, its failing social media offering, limiting it to only business and other enterprise customers. The company also announced new curbs on the information, such as call logs and contact lists, that outsider developers can gather on Android, the Google operating system used by most of the world’s smartphones. And it will impose new limits on the data shared about users of its popular email service, Gmail.
The company has said that other information, such as phone numbers and social media posts, was not put at risk and that it has no evidence that any of the data was improperly collected by outsiders. A review of two weeks of data in March, the company said, showed that as many as 500,000 people may have had their information at risk to developers from 438 software applications.
“This review crystallized what we’ve known for a while: that while our engineering teams have put a lot of effort and dedication into building Google+ over the years, it has not achieved broad consumer or developer adoption, and has seen limited user interaction with apps,” said the company blog post. “The consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement: 90% of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds.”
In the blog post, Google said it did not immediately announce the problems with Google+ because it was not sure which users were affected, whether the data had been misused and what affected users could do to protect themselves. The decision was made by a standing company committee, the Privacy & Data Protection Office, before being reviewed by company executives.
Post Your Comments