Google’s security breach, Will the world re-orientate?

Social networking has drastically changed the behavior of people with their friends, family, relatives and associates. Now a days, We (People) love sharing our personal news and views about what’s going on in our lives over social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, etc. It has become a societal cornerstone but no one thought how secure it is to share our personal information over the internet. Everyone think that outside of our trusted circle of friends and relatives, no one should see it. But that’s not the reality.

The best example is Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal. As a result of this, privacy has become a hot trending topic in the technology space. In trivial 2018, google has announced a security breach that has exposed data of over 500,000 users of its Google+ social network. Many security analysts have criticized the company as it did not exhibit these flaws when it was initially discovered in March due to regulatory scrutiny and reputational damage.

So basically, Project Strobe began earlier this year and it is “a root-and-branch review of third-party developer access to Google account and Android device data and of our philosophy around apps’ data access.”

  • The decision of shutting down Google+ for consumers is a result of first finding of Project strobe which is “There are significant challenges in creating and maintaining a successful Google+ product that meets consumer’ expectations.”
  • Another finding is People want fine-grained controls over the data they share with apps. To resolve this, action to be taken is “Granting Individual permissions” like launching more granular Google Account permissions that will show in individual dialog boxes.
  • Third finding is “When users grant Gmail’s access to the apps, they do so with certain use cases in mind.” So now Google is limiting the types of use cases that are permitted.
  • Last one is Android permission changes. Identified problem is “When users grant SMS, Contacts and Phone permissions to Android apps, they do so with certain use cases in mind.” Measures to be taken is- “limiting apps’ ability to receive Call Log and SMS permissions on Android devices, and are no longer making contact interaction data available via the Android Contacts API.

The effectiveness of Project Strobe will depend on additional controls and updated policies coming in the near future for a better and secured system.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *