Google’s failed social media venture, Google+, has been hit with yet another data breach after the company revealed it had exposed the personal data of 52.5 million users to developers.
The information, which included name, email address, occupation, and age, could have been accessed even if users’ accounts were set to private.
Details of the latest breach come just two months after Google announced that it was shutting the service in August next year after a separate bug put the data of 500,000 Google+ users at risk.
It now says it will close the site in April, even though it claims there was no evidence of user data being misused in either instance.
The company’s vice president of product management David Thacker explained how the latest bug was discovered after testing a software update introduced in November.
“[We] fixed it within a week of it being introduced. No third party compromised our systems, and we have no evidence that the app developers that inadvertently had this access for six days were aware of it or misused it in any way. With the discovery of this new bug, we have decided to expedite the shut-down.”
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