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Google Caught Misbehaving By Kenyan Startup
An anonymous reader sends in an interesting story from Mocality, a company that painstakingly built a business directory in Kenya. When they discovered that somebody was systematically harvesting the contact information they'd collected (and after a few very odd phone calls from confused Kenyan business owners), they set up a sting to see what was really going on. They swapped out the phone numbers listed for a few businesses with phone numbers in their own call centers, and then waited to see who called. Mocality was shocked to discover it was Google Kenya, who falsely claimed a business collaboration with Mocality, and then lied about Mocality's business practices.
Yes it is illegal in the US, and FTC should really look into Google's practices. Thankfully that is in the works, as privacy watchdog EPIC has complained to FTC and asked them to look into all of misbehaviors of Google.
There were no further accesses from the IP address 41.203.221.138 after 4pm 23rd December. Co-incidence? or had someone realised we were onto them?
However, there were some NEW strange messages from business owners- theyâ(TM)d apparently been contacted by a call centre in India with the same promise of a website.
NetRange: 74.125.0.0 - 74.125.255.255
CIDR: 74.125.0.0/16
OriginAS:
NetName: GOOGLE
OrgName: Google Inc.
OrgId: GOGL
Address: 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
City: Mountain View
StateProv: CA
That just indicates that the network is registered under Google CA, not that any authorisation for the activity going over that network is. The only thing we can really infer is that the operation is larger than _just_ the Kenyan office, but whether that's some Kenyan dude calling his buddy in India to do him a favour, or the CEO of Google personally masterminding an eeeeeevil takeover of everything, is anybody's guess. Probably somewhere in between.
Playing poker with a joker and some Uno cards
I'd hate to pour some cold water on your hot heads - the man has proof, recorded proof. In addition he has IP logs and tracebacks to Google HQ. He has enough evidence to stand in a court of law and press charges against Google inside of the United States. He's checked with ISPs and double-checked over a period of many months. This is no fake; and this is a huge, huge, blow to Google.
Help me, help you. - Jerry McGuire
Have you even read the article? It was a huge operation and on some days they manually scraped and called over 2500 businesses. No single employee can do that. And there was also other Google branches involved, like Google India.