Google is shutting down Google+ following massive data breach

Google earlier this year started Project Strobe which is review system for third-party developer access to Google account and Android device data and its philosophy around apps’ data access. Google today is announcing the first four findings and actions from this review. Google is shutting down Google+ for consumers. The company says that users over the years wanted to better understand how to control the data they choose to share with apps on Google+.  So as part of Project Strobe, the company's first priorities was to closely review all the APIs associated with Google+.  As the consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement; 90% of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds. The company has also discovered a bug in one of the Google+ People APIs; users can grant access to their Profile data, and the public Profile information of their friends, to Google+ apps, via the API. The bug meant that apps also had access to Profile fields that were shared with the user, but not marked as public. This data is limited to static, optional Google+ Profile fields including name, email address, occupation, gender, and age. It does not include any other data you may have posted or connected to Google+ or any other service, like ...