Google Shutting Down Google+ After Security Breach Exposed Data Of 500,000 Users

(RTTNews) - Google is shutting down its not-so-popular social media platform Google+ after data of more than 500,000 users were compromised.

Google said it discovered a bug in one of the Google+ APIs that can grant access to users profile data, and the public profile information of their friends.

The tech giant said that up to 500,000 Google+ accounts were potentially affected by the bug. The tech giant said it did not find any evidence that any developer was aware of this bug, or abusing the API.

"Every year, we send millions of notifications to users about privacy and security bugs and issues. Whenever user data may have been affected, we go beyond our legal requirements and apply several criteria focused on our users in determining whether to provide notice," Ben Smith, Google's VP of Engineering.

"Our Privacy & Data Protection Office reviewed this issue, looking at the type of data involved, whether we could accurately identify the users to inform, whether there was any evidence of misuse, and whether there were any actions a developer or user could take in response. None of these thresholds were met in this instance."

Google said it will implement a wind down of Google+ over the next 10 months and will be completely closed by end of next August. Users will be able to download and migrate their data to another service.