​

Google's failed attempt at a social media platform, Google+, will soon be coming to an end. In the aftermath of what appears to have been a major security flaw within Google+, the company ended up not disclosing the breach of information to its users. Google itself says the issue was quietly resolved in March 2018, but not before third parties obtained private user data off of Google+ profiles. Google claims that they didn't tell its users because they believed that without sufficient information on who was hacked, they found it wouldn't be useful to identify the public on the matter. Due to this, a memo from Google stated that revealing such a leak wouldn't be beneficial, and would raise concerns, akin to Facebook's own controversial leak.

Around 500,000 users were affected by this, potentially. The bug allowed for developers that had access to Google+'s API to access information of users that gave permission to the program. However, what wasn't known, was that on the given accounts, friends of that profile also had their data made available to developers, even if they made such data private.

In response to this, Google+ will be shutting down for regular users. Despite Google's efforts to keep the platform alive after it has been struggling since its launch in 2011, Google+ will not be available after August of 2019. Names, email addresses, occupation, gender, and age were all accessible, given that developers knew how to make use of the flaw.

To prevent such issues from occurring again, Project Strobe will be introduced. This method will better secure third party APIs with Google services, allowing for less data to be given to outside applications.

Source

 

[Essasetic]

Who wants to celebrate this with me?

 

[Deleted User]

Jesus Christ, Google.

 

[Chary]

And nothing of value was lost.

Seriously, who used Google+?

 

[Asia81]

Google+ ?
What's that?

 

[Cubuss]

 

[bi388]

I've never been so happy about a site being insecure

 

[Hells Malice]

I could've sworn google+ died years ago so this news confused me to see.

It was quite the failed venture. All google+ really did was make YouTube more annoying.

 

[Subtle Demise]

The only reason I had one to begin with was because it was integrated with YouTube comments, and it was the only way I could get notifications for that for a while.

 

[RedoLane]

i'd say that's a huge plus for social media as a whole.

 

[Plstic]

Awesome, one more social media site down.

 

[CoolStarDood]

And nothing of value was lost.

Seriously, who used Google+?

A friend of mine, for memes.

He then heard of reddit

 

[sarkwalvein]

Well, as long as you had a Youtube account you were -forced- to have a Google+ account, even if you didn't use it.
So perhaps it had 19 active users, but a whole more inactive users.
Not sure what data could have been leaked anyway, or how much does google share data between products, let's say your gmail, maps gps data, phone contacts, hangout data, etc.

 

[SushiKing]

Wow, goodbye google+ fan clubs....
I won't miss you.

And good riddance

 

[nachuz]

Wow, Bob was being serious with his tank and he attacked the Google+ security

 

[Taleweaver]

I'm mostly amazed that Google+ has so many users. Haven't heard of it in years.

 

[europat]

I thought it was already closed

 

[Wrathcaster]

i'd say that's a huge plus for social media as a whole.

The sound of crickets intensifies

 

[supergamer368]

Good. Nobody used Google+, and it’s not like they’ll lose any users by shutting it down anyway. Nothing of value lost here.

 

[smileyhead]

As much as I don't use Google+, it's still weird to see it go. I'm not gonna lie, I'm a bit sad inside. Kinda like with Miiverse.