Google accelerates Plus closure

Google is still having trouble protecting the personal information on its Plus service, prodding it to accelerate plans to shut down the little-used social network it created to compete with Facebook.

A privacy flaw inadvertently exposed the names, email addresses, ages and other personal information of 52.5 million Google Plus users last month.

The glitch convinced Google to close the service in April instead of August, as previously announced.

Google revealed the new closure date and its latest privacy lapse in a blog post published on Monday.

It is the second time in two months Google has disclosed the existence of a problem that enabled unauthorised access to Plus profiles.

In October, the company acknowledged finding a privacy flaw affecting 500,000 Plus users that it waited five months to disclose.