Data breaches

Google is going to shut down its social media network Google+ after the company suffered a massive data breach that exposed the private data of hundreds of thousands of Google Plus users to third-party developers.
According to the tech giant, a security vulnerability in one of Google+'s People APIs allowed third-party developers to access data for more than 500,000 users, including their usernames, email addresses, occupation, date of birth, profile photos, and gender-related information.

The news comes on the heels of a breach at Cathay Pacific exposing 9.4 million people.

British Airways said that the data breach it first reported in September is larger than previously thought. It has added an additional 185,000 victims to the official tally.

The airline said that hackers may have stolen personal data connected to an additional 77,000 payment cards, including name, billing address, email address and card payment information – including card number, expiry date and CVV. And, it uncovered a further 108,000 cards that were exposed without CVV.

Besides Timehop, another data breach was discovered last week that affects users of one of the largest web hosting companies in Germany, DomainFactory, owned by GoDaddy.

The breach initially happened back in last January this year and just emerged last Tuesday when an unknown attacker himself posted a breach note on the DomainFactory support forum.