Google is shutting down much of its social network, Google+, after user data was left exposed. It said a bug in its software meant information that people believed was private had been accessible by third parties. Google said up to 500,000 users had been affected.
Facebook is facing a potential £1.2bn fine for a data breach which allowed hackers to access the personal information of 50 million users. The Irish Data Protection Commission (IDPC), the lead supervising authority for Facebook in the EU, officially opened its investigation this week after the social media giant admitted hackers could have accessed the accounts of millions of users through a “vulnerability” last Friday.
The chairman of the U.K. Parliament's media committee says the government office that investigated the Cambridge Analytica scandal has fined Facebook £500,000 for failing to safeguard users' data.
Most Facebook users in the US remain loyal, despite the recent data sharing scandal involving a political consultancy firm, a poll suggests. Facebook admitted last month that the data of 87 million users had been improperly shared with the UK-based firm, Cambridge Analytica.