Google Plus to shut down earlier after data breach affecting almost 53 million users

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Google will expedite the closure of its signature social media site after the tech giant discovered a software error that potentially exposed the private information of nearly 53 million users.

That news came as CEO Sundar Pichai is slated to appear in front of the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, when he is expected to be pressed on the issue of data privacy by members of both parties.

Google said an update in November to its Google Plus platform allowed some applications to gain full access to user information, including those who set their profiles to “not-public” and those who had shared information privately with another Google Plus user.

No financial data, national identification numbers, or passwords were compromised, the company said in a blog post, and there is no evidence developers “who inadvertently had this access for six days were aware of it or misused it in any way.”

The company now plans to shut down Google Plus in April 2019, a faster timeline than the prior August 2019 deadline.

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