GOOGLE+ To Shut Down After Privacy Debacle

500,000 Accounts Exposed

[nomis5]

Google + is shutting down.

[bbc.co.uk...]

It said a bug in its software meant information that people believed was private had been accessible by third parties.

Google said up to 500,000 users had been affected.

[techcrunch.com...]

Google is about to have its Cambridge Analytica moment. A security bug allowed third-party developers to access Google+ user profile data since 2015 until Google discovered and patched it in March, but decided not to inform the world. When a user gave permission to an app to access their public profile data, the bug also let those developers pull their and their friends’ non-public profile fields. Indeed, 496,951 users’ full names, email addresses, birth dates, gender, profile photos, places lived, occupation and relationship status were potentially exposed, though Google says it has no evidence the data was misused by the 438 apps that could have had access.

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 8:10 pm (utc) on Oct 8, 2018]
[edit reason] added quotes [/edit]

[NickMNS]

Time to update all my footers that had links pointing back to my SM pages. Probably should just remove them all as I doubt that anyone ever clicks on them.

[lucy24]

On rare occasions I find a G+ referer in logs for assorted sites' front pages, which nobody ever visits otherwise. Tracking back, I can then see where someone visited one site, followed the G+ link, and then continued on to a different site. Come to think of it, that’s one source of faviconbot requests. Most people just glance at the list of names and don't come back for more.

:: detour to raw logs ::

Oh, right, outlinks to G+ will show up in piwik. Now, if only the link: operator still worked, I could figure out how one to-all-appearance-human got from G+ to a specific interior page. (Maybe it’s someone else’s G+ page; it sure as heck isn’t mine.)

Are they shutting it down entirely, or just removing some features?

[Leosghost]

In a statement, the firm said the issue was not serious enough to inform the public.

:)
[en.wikipedia.org...]
GDPR ?

[justpassing]

GDPR ?

"Luckily" it happened before the beginning of the GDPR, so I guess there were no requirements to inform the eu authorities...

[Leosghost]

Given that G told no-one when it happened, how do we know we can trust them , when they say that it was over in March..

[justpassing]

how do we know we can trust them

Please, this is Google, no reason to doubt...

[Leosghost]

Indeed..I forgot .. Google "do no evil"*(*)..silly me ..

*not the same as "do not lie"
(*)Did they not remove "DNE" ..a while ago ..seems they did..must be OK then ;)

[Rlilly]

Please God, one-day, let the evil monopoly Google.com also shut down

[engine]

>Are they shutting it down entirely, or just removing some features?

Google is to shut down "all consumer functionality" but will continue the business side.

[nomis5]

Who was it from Google who said something along the lines of "if you don't support Google+ you are against Google"?

What crap they put out when G+ was launched. And I wonder how much money they spent when it was launched. Millions and millions of whatever currency you choose.

AMP seems to be going down the plughole along the same lines as G+, or is that just my imagination?

[engine]

Here's the post from Google.
[blog.google...]

[Leosghost]

I suppose that the expression know to some Brits ( the older ones ) as " as happy as Larry" will no longer be true ;)

[explorador]

Just read the news and came here running

It said a bug in its software

the bug is G+ entirely

I found headlines stating only consumer branch will shut down (not the business one)

[phranque]

Google said up to 500,000 users had been affected.

...based on an analysis of 2 weeks of API logs..

from google's post:

We made Google+ with privacy in mind and therefore keep this API’s log data for only two weeks. That means we cannot confirm which users were impacted by this bug. However, we ran a detailed analysis over the two weeks prior to patching the bug, and from that analysis, the Profiles of up to 500,000 Google+ accounts were potentially affected.

Are they shutting it down entirely, or just removing some features?

from google's post:

At the same time, we have many enterprise customers who are finding great value in using Google+ within their companies. Our review showed that Google+ is better suited as an enterprise product where co-workers can engage in internal discussions on a secure corporate social network. Enterprise customers can set common access rules, and use central controls, for their entire organization. We’ve decided to focus on our enterprise efforts and will be launching new features purpose-built for businesses. We will share more information in the coming days.

[keyplyr]

Time to update all my footers that had links pointing back to my SM pages. Probably should just remove them all as I doubt that anyone ever clicks on them.

After reading this at a couple places, I removed them all a few minutes ago.

I *stupidly* installed FB, YT, G+ and Twitter APIs in the Header for all mobile layouts, so it was easy to edit just the one file... however I use them for positioning of other objects, so basically I had to rewrite the CSS. That was a PITA :)

[justpassing]

We made Google+ with privacy in mind and therefore keep this API’s log data for only two weeks.

Neat.

the two weeks prior to patching the bug,

A security bug allowed third-party developers to access Google+ user profile data since 2015 until Google discovered and patched it in March,

So in two weeks, this was "potentially" concerning 500K profiles. So imagine what it "could" have been during the 3 years preceding the discovery of the bug.

That being said, I know that bugs happen, even the brightness engineers with the higher skill can't avoid them. But what I find surprising is that, Google has a dedicated team, which is tracking security issues at "others" sites and software. They are not auditing their own code? Yes, they did since they found the bug, but 3 years to discover it, this is long.

[explorador]

I know that bugs happen, even the brightness engineers with the higher skill can't avoid them. But what I find surprising is that, Google has a dedicated team, which is tracking security issues at "others" sites and software. They are not auditing their own code? Yes, they did since they found the bug, but 3 years to discover it, this is long.

They are responsible for the security.

I'm not in their favor, but I also believe this will be more and more common (not saying we will be informed and only if we know "it counts"), but it makes sense in my little mind. More and more companies want to launch and compete with products they expect to build in weeks, not to say enterprise solutions built in months, using frameworks that swear take care of all the details and security. That... or self built solutions of code that swear the same while speeding up everything.

I understand computers are faster and faster every year but it's not like human coders can keep up to that without issues. What's funny is having small companies expecting perfection where HUGE ones have failed.

[keyplyr]

Google+ was an effective, expedient method to get images, articles, etc indexed in a matter of minutes. I will miss it.

[Chrispcritters]

All references to G+ have been removed from my sites and "final" posts have been made directing people to alternative platforms.

[Marshall]

IRONY
At the end of this blog - [blog.google...] - it reads Follow Us [on] G+

ROFL

[edited by: phranque at 2:09 am (utc) on Oct 9, 2018]
[edit reason] fixed url [/edit]

[keyplyr]

Even they think it's a PITA to remove all the links :)

[lucy24]

At the end of this blog

With another matching one in the sidebar if you're reading on a desktop.

[JS_Harris]

I hope they spin off hangouts. Live networking was fun. The rest? Meh, R.I.P.

[phranque]

At the end of this blog - ... - it reads Follow Us [on] G+

someone has to turn out the lights.

[keyplyr]

Google has many properties displaying either links to G+ or the API itself: Youtube, GSC, Gmail, etc

[not2easy]

People who signed up for other Google services in the past few years, such as gmail, were automatically added to G+ whether they were aware or not. Those profiles are there whether the account was used or not. I believe it was around 2011 or 2012 that a G+ profile was created when you signed up unless you were extra diligent. One way to tell - if you're not sure - is to log in to G-mail and click your icon in the upper right corner. If you have a G+ profile there is a link to it there.

[keyplyr]

All those "automatically added to G+" accounts that weren't being used were purged a couple months ago. So it seems the platform may have been considered chopping-block material for some time.

Looks like account data, G+ posts, etc will be available for download until August 2019 (source: NewsY) so they're not going away for a while.

Still, after removing all SM from my web properties, this gives me a clean break... and significantly speeds up my mobile site (never had any SM APIs on my desktop version.)

[Lexur]

Where did you read about the closure of Google+?

All I can read is info about one (enormous) security breach and the measures Google thinks to apply and some (click baiting) headlines saying Google closes G+ but not a single word, a link or any source about that into the articles itself.

[keyplyr]

@Lexur - A Google search for "Google Plus closing" returns many results.

Here's one place: [google.com...]