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Google Exposed Private Data of Hundreds of Thousands of Google+ Users and Then Opted Not To Disclose, Report Says (wsj.com)
Google exposed the private data of hundreds of thousands of users of the Google+ social network and then opted not to disclose the issue this past spring, in part because of fears that doing so would draw regulatory scrutiny and cause reputational damage, WSJ reported Monday, citing people briefed on the incident and documents. From the report: As part of its response to the incident, the Alphabet unit plans to announce a sweeping set of data privacy measures that include permanently shutting down all consumer functionality of Google+, the people said. The move effectively puts the final nail in the coffin of a product that was launched in 2011 to challenge Facebook and is widely seen as one of Google's biggest failures.
A software glitch in the social site gave outside developers potential access to private Google+ profile data between 2015 and March 2018, [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source] when internal investigators discovered and fixed the issue, according to the documents and people briefed on the incident. A memo reviewed by the Journal prepared by Google's legal and policy staff and shared with senior executives warned that disclosing the incident would likely trigger "immediate regulatory interest" and invite comparisons to Facebook's leak of user information to data firm Cambridge Analytica. Update: In an announcement Monday, Google said it was shutting down Google+ for consumers: We are shutting down Google+ for consumers. Over the years we've received feedback that people want to better understand how to control the data they choose to share with apps on Google+. So as part of Project Strobe, one of our first priorities was to closely review all the APIs associated with Google+. This review crystallized what we've known for a while: that while our engineering teams have put a lot of effort and dedication into building Google+ over the years, it has not achieved broad consumer or developer adoption, and has seen limited user interaction with apps. The consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement: 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds. Google+ still receives north of 200 million page views every month on the web, according to SimilarWeb, a third-party web analytics firm.
A software glitch in the social site gave outside developers potential access to private Google+ profile data between 2015 and March 2018, [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source] when internal investigators discovered and fixed the issue, according to the documents and people briefed on the incident. A memo reviewed by the Journal prepared by Google's legal and policy staff and shared with senior executives warned that disclosing the incident would likely trigger "immediate regulatory interest" and invite comparisons to Facebook's leak of user information to data firm Cambridge Analytica. Update: In an announcement Monday, Google said it was shutting down Google+ for consumers: We are shutting down Google+ for consumers. Over the years we've received feedback that people want to better understand how to control the data they choose to share with apps on Google+. So as part of Project Strobe, one of our first priorities was to closely review all the APIs associated with Google+. This review crystallized what we've known for a while: that while our engineering teams have put a lot of effort and dedication into building Google+ over the years, it has not achieved broad consumer or developer adoption, and has seen limited user interaction with apps. The consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement: 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds. Google+ still receives north of 200 million page views every month on the web, according to SimilarWeb, a third-party web analytics firm.
It's the same thing that happened with Facebook. It's almost like building these massive siphons of personal data inherently leads to massive personal data leaks...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The move effectively puts the final nail in the coffin of a product that was launched in 2011 to challenge Facebook and is widely seen as one of Google's biggest failures.
Google,
Exposing the private data of hundreds of thousands of Google+ users and then choosing not to disclose the issue is a bigger failure than Google+ could ever be.
You're very evil,
AC
opted not to disclose the issue this past spring, in part because of fears that doing so would draw regulatory scrutiny
Aren't they required by law to disclose data breaches/exposure? How does a coverup help when your company is large enough that *someone* will blab?
Who are you going to trust for information then? It's certainly not going to be the company's PR department. The trustworthiness of the government is dubious at the best of times, and few here would trust the current administration. A random anonymous blogger on the internet more likely to be a paid shill than a journalist.
I don't think there are better options here. Maybe it's a sad reflection on the state of journalism that it's come to this, but even if you weren't so cynical (or perhaps too much of a realist if I'm allowed to be cynical) I would say that getting your news from a single source is a bad idea regardless of how much trust you put into journalism. Fortunately, there's a wide variety of news sources and while each might have their own individual biases or way of framing the story, there are probably a set of facts that can be shaken out of the different narratives they are all weaving.
If Google is closing down Google+, can we have the "+' operator back in the Google Search syntax? It used to indicate a required search term.