Google+, over the years, has been known as the social network that refuses to die. Recently, from both The Wall Street Journal and Google’s own response, there might be a serious security breach or vulnerability for three whole years that Google has chosen not to tell the community about. According to The Wall Street Journal, there has been a “software glitch” that has probably revealed data to undesired eyes from 2015 all the way to March this year (when Google has discovered it) Googe had chosen not to say anything about this out of fear of potentially bad Public Relations.
What data was endangered? Google reports that full names, email addresses, birth dates, gender, profile pictures, place lived, occupation and relationship statuses. Anything that wasn’t exposed is reported to be email messages, timeline posts, direct messages, phone numbers, and other types of communication data.
After the report by The Wall Street Journal, Google had posted it’s response to the issue. The full response covered how they would keep all the data safe under an action named “Project Strobe” The first move to kick off this initiative is to shut down the already existing Google+. To make the shutdown, Google will give everyone 10 months to let them remove themselves from Google+. By the end of August 2019, Google is officially pulling the plug on the social media network and will then turn it into an enterprise-focused platform.
As well as pulling the plug on Google+, Google is also forcing app developers to provide a more detailed explanation of what they want to do with your Google account should they ever ask for access to it. You should now see individual pop-ups about each item the app needs or wants access to with a reason why they do.
Last, but not least, Google has stated they’d be limiting access to its Gmail Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and be sterner about what certain apps can access in the Play Store in call logs, SMS permissions on Android devices.
