Last spring a security bug infiltrated Google+, and Google failed to notify its users out of fear that such news would “draw regulatory scrutiny and cause reputational damage” according to the Wall Street Journal, who also noted a memo written by Google’s legal and policy staff that warned senior executives of the incident’s likelihood to spur “immediate regulatory interest.”
CNBC reports that Google usually determines the urgency of such a breach “based on the type of data involved, whether it can accurately identify who to inform, whether there is evidence of misuse, and whether there is any action that a user can take in response.” Google eventually reported the bug on their blog, explaining that the breach did not meet any of the criteria that requires the company to immediately alert its users.
The breach left the names, email addresses, birth dates, profile photos, and gender of up to 500,000 Google+ accounts vulnerable, though phone numbers seem to be safe. Google claims that the developers at API, the application programming interface that exposed the private data, did not directly misuse any of the data, but the program is used by 438 applications.
Swimming in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, numerous tech giant executives testifying in front of Senate and House committees, and a plethora of other security issues regarding election tampering, conservative bias, and data and privacy policies, Google is dealing with this breach during a rather tumultuous time in tech. President Trump has criticized the tech world’s privacy practices, but has yet to show any intention of proposing actual regulation. The European Union, on the other hand, has been cracking down on data security, charging Google with antitrust abuse of its mobile operating system, Android, resulting in a $5 billion fine.
Google is planning to shut down the social network site over the next ten months due to low usage and engagement. After the news of the breach, the company’s shares dropped 2 percent to $1134.23 but swiftly recovered to less than 1%.
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