JFBConnect has supported Google authentication on Joomla for more than 6 years. It's one of the most popular networks we support, and so we wanted to update you with changes that have come to the Google+ social network. In March of 2018, Google+ experienced a security breach. Shortly after, they announced that Google+ would be shutting down. The front-end of Google+, where you visit with a web browser, will be turned off in April. The API, used for authentication and pulling in profile information, was formally shut down on March 8th.
We released JFBConnect v8.0 in June 2018 with the changes required to continue supporting Google authentication, without Google+ profile data. Further updates up until v8.0.6 have further improved compatibility with the changes Google now requires.
All other forms of Google authentication - GMail, Youtube, GSuite, etc are still valid ways to authenticate to your Joomla site using JFBConnect. There is less profile information available from each of these services than was available from Google+. However, if we're being honest, Google+ was never terribly popular, so a lot of that extra profile data was never available from users anyways.
If you use, or need, Google Authentication on your website, make sure you are running the latest version of JFBConnect, currently v8.0.6.
As always, test authentication on your site to ensure it still works as expected.
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