Google to be shut down for consumers after bug exposed user data

Washington, October 10: Tech giant Google has said that its social network Google will be shut down after it was discovered that a bug exposed private data of up to 500,000 users to external developers.

 

The announcement was made by Ben Smith, Google Fellow and vice-president of engineering, in a blog post yesterday, in which he noted that the Indian-American headed company could not confirm which users were impacted by the bug.

Smith said the technical bug was detected as part of an effort called Project Strobe started by Google early this year. It is a root-and-branch review of third-party developer access to Google accounts and Android device data and of the philosophy around apps' data access.

Sunder Pichai, the Indian-American CEO of Google, was briefed on the plan to not notify users after an internal committee had reached that decision. Smith, however, announced that Google will not be shut down immediately.

Early this year, Facebook acknowledged that Cambridge Analytica, a British research organisation that performed work for the Trump campaign, had improperly gained access to the personal information of up to 87 million Facebook users.