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Thousands of Fake Google Maps Listings Redirect Users To Fraudulent Sites (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Tens of thousands of fake listings are added to Google Maps each month, redirecting users to fraudulent websites selling phony or overpriced services, or are part of some referral scam. Researchers say that 74% of these abusive listings were for local businesses in the U.S. and India, mainly in pockets around certain local hotspots, especially in large metropolitan areas such as New York, Chicago, Houston, or Los Angeles. In most cases, the scheme was simple. A customer in need of a locksmith or electrician would search Google Maps for a local company. If he navigated to the website of a fake business or called its number, a call center operator posing as the business' representative would send over an unaccredited contractor that would charge much more than regular professionals. If a customer's situation were urgent, the contractor would often charge more than the initial agreed upon price. Researchers said that 40.3% of all the listings for fake companies they found focused on on-call services, such as locksmiths, plumbers, and electricians, and were for customers who were desperate to resolve issues. Further, overall, operators of fake listings managed to hijack 0.5% of Google Maps' outbound traffic for the studied period.
I was just adjusting my head set. Hi there. I wanted to tell you about ....
This is why we can't have good things.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
With Google maps, at least you will get there, even if it is fake. With Apple maps, you never know.
How it is a fake listing? If I call expecting a locksmith and a locksmith comes, then I don't see how the listing is fake.
You'd figure they'd stop it from happening again but I guess not.
Researchers say that 74% of these abusive listings were for local businesses in the U.S. and India, mainly in pockets around certain local hotspots, especially in large metropolitan areas such as New York, Chicago, Houston, or Los Angeles.
I am sure one of these large metro areas is in India, why else would they include India in the countries list? 35 cities in India with population more than 1 million. Top 50 cities in USA
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I have seen some cases where, say a restaurant was listed at a location that is actually an empty field. So Mr. Google Maps User gets directions and wastes time and gas driving to an empty field. My guess is that such listings are submitted by the competitor of the restaurant or maybe a disgruntled former employee or customer.
I have also seen my submissions to update bogus locations or bad info go unpublished, so for all we know some of the Google Maps community editors are Bad Guys themselves who seek to keep certain listings with bad info for the benefit of their buddies or businesses who pay them to keep things that way.
tl;dr Crowdsourcing works only as long as the crowd is trustworthy.
slashdot: A failed experiment.
If they actually perform the requested work, they're not exactly fake companies -- just bad companies with deceptive pricing and uncertified workmanship.
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The ingenuity of shitbag scammers never ceases to amaze me. They manage to pollute everything, large or small. How I wish they would all die in a fire.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
but it seems unlicensed or shady overpriced contractors that do exist but have no real brick n mortor buisness. the buisness model without the deciet sounds like a uber type buisness could be world wide but local people are contractors using google maps as as the app to connect them together.
Is that how I ended up in Walley World? https://www.bustle.com/article...
I am Advocating to the President the Extra-Judicial Killing of All Alphabet and Google Employees back to 1 January 1998.
Ha ha Ice Cream Man, Prof. Eric Der Schmidity!
Die ... Ignominiously !
As if there weren't any other avenues of deception, theft and fraud left in the world. Now we see that Amazonbie has introduced another avenue of criminal mischief.
Maybe in late 2501... this kind of criminal behavior will be noticed by Buck Rogers. But in the mean time.. the rest of us must monitor and report the pigslop-laden-miscreants and stop them before they prey upon the innocent to pay for their bit coin-fueled porn addictions.
Peace out.
Here. Anybody going there ?
I saw this years ago when I was looking for a locksmith to get a specialized key made. A lot of the "local" locksmith listings are directed to the same nationwide company. I suspect that company then turns around and sends out a legitimate locksmith for a hefty fee.
The problem is that most people aren't looking for a locksmith unless it's an emergency. They don't have time to research a reputable one. After this discovery, I make it a point to save the phone number of any locksmith businesses I see around my neighborhood. Brick and mortar locksmiths are nearly extinct!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".