Posted on Tuesday, December 11 2018 @ 13:59 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Google announced its unpopular Google+ social network will close down in April 2019, , which is four months earlier than previously communicated. The news follows after the disclosure of yet another major personal data leak. Two months ago, Google confessed the private profile data of 500,000 Google+ users got exposed, and now the search giant reveals a new leak affected over 52 million people!
The programming interface bug allowed developers to access names, ages, email addresses, occupations, and a wealth of other personal details even when they were set to be nonpublic.
The bug was introduced in a release that went live at an undisclosed date in November and was fixed a week later, Google officials said in a blog post. During the time the bug was active, developers of apps that requested permission to view profile information that a user had added to their Google+ profile received permission to view profile information about that user even when the details were set to not-public. What’s more, apps with access to users’ Google+ profile data had permission to access non-public profile data that other Google+ users shared with the consenting user. In all, the post said, 52.5 million users are affected.
Via: ARS Technica
