San Francisco, Jan 17 (IANS): Google has discovered that users of third-party Chromium browsers have inadvertently been able to access data and other sync features reserved for Chrome.

To prevent future abuse, Google announced that it will limit access to its private Chrome application programming interface (APIs) starting on March 15.

By removing access to Chrome sync for other Chromium web browsers, it removes their ability to integrate the Chrome Sync API to sync their users' data to all devices where they are logged into their Google account.

"During a recent audit, we discovered that some third-party Chromium-based browsers were able to integrate Google features, such as Chrome sync and Click to Call, that are only intended for Google's use," the search engine giant said in a statement.

Google will not delete any data already synced from these third-party browsers, but they also won't sync any new data after March 15.

"For users who accessed Google features (like Chrome sync) through a third-party Chromium-based browser, their data will continue to be available in their Google Account, and data that they have stored locally will continue to be available locally," the company added.

Google did not state which browsers were discovered using Chrome Sync — most major Chromium-based browsers either have their own sync engines (Opera, Brave, etc.) or don't offer cloud sync at all.