Knogin Blog

Another day and another data breach.   New York Times calls out Google for exposing  "the private data of hundreds of thousands of users of the Google+ social network and then opted not to disclose the issue this past spring, in part because of fears that doing so would draw regulatory scrutiny and reputational damage".

Google 'feared repercussions'.  Really?
Strike 1..

What caused the data breach?  A security bug allowed third-party developers to access Google+ user profile data since 2015 until it was discovered and patched in March of 2018.   But,  it took them 6 months to finally report it to the public. 

Really?  Six months to make it public?  Strike 2..... 

 Embarrassingly, Google admits their internal  'Project Strobe' security audit review also  "crystallized what we’ve known for a while: that while our engineering teams have put a lot of effort and dedication into building Google+ over the years, it has not achieved broad consumer or developer adoption"   Really?  Who knew! (shhhhh, almost everyone knew)

Get ready for a  big announcement.. drum roll please.....  Google+  is going to shut down in 2019. 

Strike 3, Google+ is OUT..
That's OK, because no-one really used their Facebook wannabe anyway.

So, what the moral of the story?

While the Google data breach is small compared to the ones revealed by Facebook,  your online security is something that you should take very seriously.  

With every social media account you sign up for, every picture you post and status you update,  you

If I asked you, 'what are two things that are certain in life?',  what would you say?  Death and taxes, right?

But, what if I asked you,  'what is one thing that is almost certain to affect you in  your Digital Life?'

What would you say?

If you said, 'another announcement of a cyber breach that could affect me, my family or my business', then you would be 100% right.

Ok, while it is a bit of a stretch to tie all 3 of these things together, I hope you get the point.
Facebook alone has reported breaches that affected the data of  87M people in April 2018, and 50M people in September of 2018.  

Your online security is something that you should take very seriously.  Think about this. Do you  know someone  that has been hacked, had their identity compromised or got hit with a virus or..., , maybe even worse?  

With every social media account you sign up for, every picture you post and status you update,  you