Alphabet Inc’s Google said on Monday up to 500,000 Google+ user accounts were potentially affected by a bug that may have exposed their data to external developers, and the company is shutting down the social network for consumers.
Google opted not to disclose the issue partly due to fears of regulatory scrutiny, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier, citing unnamed sources and internal documents.
A software glitch in the social site gave outside developers potential access to private Google+ profile data between 2015 and March 2018, when internal investigators discovered and fixed the issue, the report said.
Shares of Alphabet Inc were down 2.6 per cent at $1138.53.
The affected data is limited to static, optional Google+ Profile fields including name, email address, occupation, gender and age, Google said.
