Google To Abandon Google+ Due To An Unexpected Security Blunder

Google+ a big and actually interesting social platform introduced by Google is on the verge of getting a shutdown. According to the latest news, the reason is some security lapse which has been found in the consumer version of Google+.

Google is not instantly acting on the decision and decided to close the Google+ consumers version in a few upcoming months. However, the news was disclosed on previous Monday but, it is still fresh in some of the loyal consumers’ mind. They are even mourning as their one of the best social resources is going away forever.

Reason To Shut Down Google+

Everyone wants security for their shared, saved or even transmitted data over different social media channels. But here, Google+ has been caught red-handed for the biggest mishap that private data of thousands of consumers have potentially disclosed to the public.

Due to this unwanted privacy glitch, outside developers got the access to get the Google+ consumers private data. Google added that it’s not certain yet that developers were aware of this non-believable issue or that any part of personal data has been misused. 

The issue has not been detected abruptly even it was suspected earlier in March. Since then, around 5, 00, 000 Google+ profiles have been affected by the bug. Google also says that the data affected data only included a few generic fields like name, address, gender, occupation and age. Though the data is quite personal. Here, Google says that Google+ has not disclosed conversations, posts, Google account data, phone number and G Suite content available over there. 

It’s been around seven years when Google launched Google+. Today, due to some of the negative concerns, Google decided to shut this down. Google said that a great low usage and user engagement of Google+ has been observed in a few past months. It also seems that approx 90 percent of Google+ user sessions stay less than 5 seconds. 

How Google+ Determines Search & Ranking Effects 

An added statement was there by Google which states that no ranking impacts will be seen as Google+ is going away.

However, there were many advantages Google+ was providing from the ranking point of view in past few years. Google+ users were then able to personalize their searches based on their searched and clicked results. Here, Google lets users see the emails, photos and other stuff by directly accessing them from the associated Google+ account.

About Google+ Privacy Bug

The news stated that the bug has been detected during an inspection where third-party developers of root-and-branch-review contributed their efforts in the project called “ Project Strobe”. They had provided the access to Google account and Android device data to proceed the test successfully.

The project was solely focused on examining the privacy controls and areas where developers should be constrained and the data policies should be rigid.

Prevention Followed By Google

Earlier, Google granted granular Google account permissions to the consumers. The approach works by analyzing what information you need to share or allow for when an app prompts users for access. The users mostly agree by rendering explicit permissions to proceed operations of an app. For instance, if a user wants to access Google Drive and Calendar, you will have complete access to only one of these. 

Google has now become strict to the privacy measures it has implemented for other areas. For example, it will limit the access of text call logs data by the Android apps available in your phone. Only the default selected app will have access to seek such request from users.

Wrap Up:

Similar to the Facebook, Google is also facing a lot of privacy issues which enforced it to get its one of the most used Chrome Web Browsers. The update was intentionally introduced to cover the ways how users or data get transferred just after logging into it. Google said that the company will shut down Google+ in the next 10 months and make users constantly aware about how can they migrate or download their data from existing accounts.