Google announced that it is going to terminate its “social media app,” Google+, in 2019. While Google claims this decision is in response to increasingly poor use and uptake of Google+ among individuals, it might have a little something to do with a potentially large-scale vulnerability in the app’s API (Application Program Interface) that may have put many profiles at risk. A half a million profiles, to be exact.
Even thought Google+ customers are just finding out about this now, it seems the breach happened and was patched back in March. Apparently there was an unknown weakness in the Google+ API that may have made some entries in its Profile data fields visible to a hacker, including vulnerable information like the user’s age, email address, gender, name and occupation. So, if you were one of the Google+ customers that took the option to “share” this info with your fellow friends using the social media app, you might well have been hacked.
While the company steadfastly asserts that there is no evidence that any developer exploited the deficiency in the API, Google has decided to address the issue by shutting the entire app down as part of a new 10-month project called Strobe. And the company still intends to keep a form of the app alive for professional/business customers.
If you think you may have been hacked, it’s a good idea to go in and change your password. Or even if you don’t, it’s always a good idea to do this periodically to keep your accounts secure and up to date.
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