It's known that Google Plus has been shut down by Google. This has happened not immediately after the company discovered a security vulnerability. In fact, the security glitch was discovered early this year. The private data of up to 500,000 users stood compromised but the company didn't blow the whistle apparently out of fear of inviting regulatory scrutiny.

"Tech giants continue to violate their users' trust: Google discovered a bug in Google+ code earlier this year that allowed third-party app developers to access private information. But Google never disclosed this breach to the public," a Freedom Of The Press report says.

A media report informs that as many as 438 applications of other companies may have had access to the glitch through coding links (known in technical jargon as application programming interfaces).

The users have expressed concerns this week that outside developers must have seen their Google Plus posts, phone numbers etc. But it didn't happen, the company says. Only user names, email addresses, occupation, gender and age were vulnerable.