Google+ Data Breach: Affected Users in India Get Notified via Mail

Google has reached out to affected users in India who are likely to have impacted by the Google Plus data breach.

Representative image of Google+. 

(Photo: iStock)

Indian Google users affected by the Google Plus data breach in October 2018 got notified about it via email on Thursday, 3 January.

Google had decided to terminate its social media platform Google+ after a software glitch caused the search giant to expose the data of thousands of Google+ users.

Google opted not to disclose the discovery of a bug in its system that gave access of users’s private data to developers outside Google’s domain.

The shutdown meant that most of the third party applications that require a Google+ authentication will cease to recognise the user’s profile. This means users will no longer be able to use apps that need access to Google accounts.

It is possible that Google had to scan through all the 50 million accounts said to have been affected, which has taken them time to reach out to each of them individually.

As you can see below, the mail clearly states that users who granted app permission via Google Plus are likely to have been able to access more information than a user allowed.

The concerns listed here do no pose direct danger to each of the users getting this mail, but it’s worth noting that giving third-party applications login access via accounts like Google Plus or Facebook isn’t highly recommended.

Affected Google users getting this mail in India. (Photo: via Gmail screen grab)

The mail also reiterates that the breach issue was limited to profile fields and did not give developers access to financial data, password and no misuse was observed by the security team at Google.

The estimate timeline given by Google to shut down the entire Google+ network was 10 months. However, another breach was reported after that, which assured an earlier closure of the social media platform.

Google ran an internal review of developer access to Google accounts and Android device data called Project Strobe, where it discovered that third-party access to user information was going beyond what they really needed.

Google is changing the dynamics of data access for third-party developers, something that’s going to work in favour of users and hopefully this will come as a relief to millions of users relying on Google for their day-to-day activities.