On Oct. 8th, 2018, Google Plus announced it is shutting down its social network for consumers, citing a security breach that may have affected up to 500,000 user accounts.
This closure comes on the heels of a Wall Street Journal report that Google failed to disclose the breach, which exposed users’ names, email addresses, occupations, gender, age and contacts, for months.
According to Google’s blog post, it did not disclose the security issue back in March 2018 when it was first discovered because there was no evidence that any developer was aware of this bug or abusing the application program interface (API).
Google Plus also indicated it would operate until August 2019 to allow its users the opportunity to download and migrate their data.
Earlier this month, there was a similar data breach disclosed by Facebook – read about it in the Security Matters blog.
October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, discover more best practices for staying safe online by visiting the Security Matters blog.