After reports of data being compromised, Google releases statement saying they are shutting down Google+ for consumers

Tech giant Google on Monday, October 8, revealed a massive data breach.  As per a report carried by Wall Street Journal, private data of hundreds of thousands of users of Google+ social network are compromised. Google exposed that  private data of hundreds of thousands of users of its Google+ social network are compromised. Responding to incident, Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) reportedly said that it is planning to permanently shut down all consumer functionality. It furr stated that Google is planning to anunce a sweeping set of data privacy measures. 

Google revealed that a software glitch in social site gave outside developers potential access to private Google+ profile data between 2015 and March 2018. However, later internal investigators discovered and fixed issue, report said, citing documents and people briefed on incident.

Google released an official statement on same where it said, "Every year, we send millions of tifications 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 wher to provide tice."

Report furr stated that shares of  Alphabet Inc came down by 2.2 per cent at $1142.43 following incident. 

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As per media reports, a memo, prepared by Google’s legal and policy staff and shared with senior executives, warned that disclosing incident would likely trigger “immediate regulatory interest” and invite comparisons to Facebook’s leak of user information to data firm Cambridge Analytica, report said.

Moreover, Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai at that time was briefed on plan t to tify users immediately, as per decision taken by  internal committee. WSJ furr reported that Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai was briefed on plan t to tify users after an internal committee h reached that decision.

In an official statement released by Google, company stated that y are shutting down Google+ for customers. It stated:

"Over years we’ve received feedback that people want to better understand how to control data y choose to share with apps on Google+. So as part of Project Strobe, one of our first priorities was to closely review all APIs associated with Google+. This review crystallized what we’ve kwn for a while: that while our engineering teams have put a lot of effort and dedication into building Google+ over years, it has t achieved bro consumer or developer option, and has seen limited user interaction with apps. consumer version of Google+ currently has low us and engment: 90 per cent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds.Our review showed that our Google+ APIs, and associated controls for consumers, are challenging to develop and maintain. Underlining this, as part of our Project Strobe audit, we discovered a bug in one of Google+ People APIs."

Giving out details on same, company revealed, 

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• Users can grant access to ir Profile data, and public Profile information of ir friends, to Google+ apps, via API.
• bug meant that apps also h access to Profile fields that were shared with user, but t marked as public.  
• This data is limited to static, optional Google+ Profile fields including name, email dress, occupation, and . (See full list on our developer site.) It does t include any or data you may have posted or connected to Google+ or any or service, like Google+ posts, messs, Google account data, phone numbers or G Suite content.
• We discovered and immediately patched this bug in March 2018. We believe it occurred after launch as a result of API’s interaction with a subsequent Google+ code change.
• We me Google+ with privacy in mind and refore keep this API’s log data for only two weeks. That means we cant confirm which users were impacted by this bug. However, we ran a detailed analysis over two weeks prior to patching bug, and from that analysis, Profiles of up to 500,000 Google+ accounts were potentially affected. Our analysis showed that up to 438 applications may have used this API.
• We found  evidence that any developer was aware of this bug, or abusing API, and we found  evidence that any Profile data was misused.