According to Threatpost, The consumer version of Google+ will now be shut down in April instead of August after a bug was found that impacts at least 50 million users.
The discovery of a new API bug in Google+ has led Google to hasten the shuttering of its consumer version of the social-networking platform, the tech giant said Monday.
Google was already in the process of shutting down Google+ after a different API software bug in the platform, disclosed in October, left the company embroiled in a privacy scandal. However, the discovery of this newer bug – which impacts a whopping 52.5 million users – has now led the tech company to move up the timetable for discontinuing its platform.
“With the discovery of this new bug, we have decided to expedite the shutdown of all Google+ APIs; this will occur within the next 90 days,” said David Thacker, vice president of product management for Google’s G-Suite, in a post. “In addition, we have also decided to accelerate the sunsetting of consumer Google+ from August 2019 to April 2019. While we recognize there are implications for developers, we want to ensure the protection of our users.”
The most recent bug was addressed by Google in a November software update. It allowed apps requesting permission to view users’ Google+ profile information – including their name, email address, occupation, age and more – to gain full permissions, even when the user was not public.
