Google Plus to be discontinued

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After a massive data breech, Google (Alphabet) has announced that its social network site, Google Plus, will be discontinued by the end of the year.

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Before the above announcement, Google issued a statement about the data breech:

During a two-week period in late March, Google ran tests to determine the impact of the bug, one of the people said. It found 496,951 users who had shared private profile data with a friend could have had that data accessed by an outside developer, the person said. Some of the individuals whose data was exposed to potential misuse included paying users of G Suite, a set of productivity tools including Google Docs and Drive, the person said. G Suite customers include businesses, schools and governments.

In an internal memo, Google’s legal staff recommended against disclosing the bug because it would invite “immediate regulatory interest” and result in a comparison to Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Data from hundreds of thousands of users was potentially accessible, but Google did not discover misuse of the data by outside developers. Exposed data included names, email addresses, birth dates, gender, profile photos, places lived, occupation, and relationship status.

Phone numbers, email messages, timeline posts, and direct messages were not accessible.

Google will be shutting the service down over a 10 month period.

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