Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 132 posts

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#91

Post by gwern »

Semaphor wrote: post #28

The yelp review paint a picture of 2010: Great food, great service 2011: Good to great food, horrible service 2012: Horrible food, horrible service I usually don't trust yelp, but the decline is way too visible here.

> I usually don't trust yelp, but the decline is way too visible here.

So, you are told of a credible example of a restaurant being sabotaged on one user-content-based website by opponents, and then turn to another user-content-based notorious for fake reviews & astroturfing, and see an abrupt & extraordinary decline on every axis, and rather than take this as additional evidence of the sabotage campaign, you take this as evidence that the restaurant was declining simultaneously with the sabotage campaign? Interesting reasoning there.

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#92

Post by pdonis »

xorcist wrote: post #63
spot wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSM is still so irrelevant that the spammers and scammers have not targeted it yet. Once they do, it will have the same problems Google does, but worse because they don't have the resources to fight back. It is much easier to fix mistakes than it is to fight an active adversary.

Your prediction fails to account for the fact that Wikipedia can manage the problem, and they are probably the most important information source there is while still being by far the easiest to edit. What makes you think it is impossible for OSM to do it? (Also, a bit dishonest to call OSM irrelevant when it is the canonical data source for a number of famous application, including Apple, even if it's not directly ap…

> Your prediction fails to account for the fact that Wikipedia can manage the problem

Except that Wikipedia can't manage the problem. See cratermoon's post along similar lines upthread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7999720

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#93

Post by dobs »

_wp3r wrote: post #71

If you have ever used mapmaker, and attempted to update/modify POI and roads, then you will be aware of the strange and unvalidated process of accepting and denying changes to Gmaps. There are more than a couple bad actors that are Approved Google map moderators. I am not sure if their collective actions for denying and modifying changes are a net good or net positive. It has always seemed strange that someone from W…

Someone started creating fake business listings on fake side-streets with the names of major intersections throughout my city about a year ago. So if you searched for directions to something like "Main and 1st" you'd get redirected to someone's backyard several miles away.

Reporting it when it first started happening led to nothing but rejections and it's only in the last month or so that some of the listings are finally being purged.

If they can't be bothered to take reports seriously when they're verifiable through authoritative sources (or heck, streetview) then it seems like a hopeless case for small businesses.

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#94

Post by hyperliner »

VikingCoder wrote: post #4
hyperliner wrote: post #2

To what extent is a weapon or a tool at fault, instead of the shooter or user? This reminds me of Google bombing (for example, the attack on Rick Santorum, a Senator whose ideas we can all disagree with). It seems to me that there is a responsibility here for Google. Google has become in effect the only way for small businesses to get or not get exposure, and the way Google automates the process without authorization…

The business owner needs to care what their online presence (including their Google Places) looks like. There is nothing Google or anyone else can do, if the business doesn't care. When the business does care, there are lots of options to clean up their online presence.

Assuming that a competitor did this, then it is fair to assume that the person does not know how the "criminal mind" of someone who is after him works.

I just learned today that someone wearing Google Glass can record me typing my password on my iPad from a long distance, and be able to algorithmically figure out my password. Did I know that? No, and I am not even 74 years old.

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#95

Post by derekp7 »

Would this type of hack fall under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act? If so, it seems like an easy case to prosecute (the person committing the act has a financial profit motive, the public would like to see genuine bad actors get punished, etc). Or does the CFAA not apply because this isn't a protected resources?

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#96

Post by pdonis »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #68
jokoon wrote: post #60

I always wondered about this, but now it's obvious: google doesn't make sure those business info are accurate, it might have a huge cost to verify those info, for example asking for some paperwork to check. openstreetmap, on the other hand, seems much more trustful on this, since it's moderated a little like wikipedia is. I guess if openstreetmap was more popular, you might start to see similar problems described in…

As a business owner, it's your job to make sure those listings are accurate, just as it would be you would want to make sure the yellow pages had your right phone number. There's no excuse for technological illiteracy or ignorance, and if you don't want to bother to be in charge of your online presence, you had better hire someone for the job.

> There's no excuse for technological illiteracy or ignorance, and if you don't want to bother to be in charge of your online presence, you had better hire someone for the job.

I hate to disagree with this because I sympathize strongly with the underlying sentiment, but I have to disagree anyway in this case. If you had just said that business owners who don't have an online presence could benefit from having one, I would certainly agree. But if, for whatever reason, a business owner does not have an online presence, that does not give online entities like Google an excuse to publish false factual information about them. The operating hours of a business are factual information, and if Google is going to let such information appear on its site, it has a responsibility to verify its accuracy with the actual business owner.

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#97

Post by diogenescynic »

_wp3r wrote: post #71

If you have ever used mapmaker, and attempted to update/modify POI and roads, then you will be aware of the strange and unvalidated process of accepting and denying changes to Gmaps. There are more than a couple bad actors that are Approved Google map moderators. I am not sure if their collective actions for denying and modifying changes are a net good or net positive. It has always seemed strange that someone from W…

>I really enjoy editing/contributing to Gmaps, but the seemingly random/poisonous moderation process in that ecosystem is a huge turn off.

Sounds exactly what has happened to Wikipedia and Reddit--a small number of power users finding ways to exploit platforms for personal gain.

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#98

Post by VikingCoder »

wutbrodo wrote: post #82
pmontra wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and more than that: he didn't know what Google Map is. He is 74 and can be excused for that. Fast forward ourselves into our 70+: how many new things we won't know or care about then?

I think everyone here is sympathetic to the idea that a 74 year-old shouldn't have to keep up with every new technology, but you seem to be forgetting the fact that he's running a business. Not knowing what Maps is is fine for a random consumer, but excusing a restaurant owner for not knowing about online map services is basically saying that he's no longer competent to run the restaurant.

...or knowing that he doesn't know about "that online stuff," and hiring someone who does know about it to help him manage it. It's a cost of business.

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#99

Post by Vik1ng »

spot wrote: post #58
Vik1ng wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the real problem is this google has the half baked crowd-sourcing. Where you actually have a closed system and then let some people crowd source on top of it and have different ranks and people approving. It's the same reason Wikipedia is losing editors, because people don't want to wait for some admin to approve it. In OpenStreetMap as a community project which is know as such people are much more likely to…

OSM is still so irrelevant that the spammers and scammers have not targeted it yet. Once they do, it will have the same problems Google does, but worse because they don't have the resources to fight back. It is much easier to fix mistakes than it is to fight an active adversary.

   but worse because they don't have the resources to fight back.
Germany has more than 500 active mappers every day. http://osmstats.altogetherlost.com/index.php?item=countries

Google does not come anywhere close to this. Not to mention that only a few of them can actually approve and fix things.

And because google is closed it does not have any kind of Quality Assurance tools. In OSM you could easily check if the last edit changed the opening hours and if the new one is strange (like not open Saturday evening)

Re: How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will

#100

Post by scintill76 »

derekp7 wrote: post #95

Would this type of hack fall under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act? If so, it seems like an easy case to prosecute (the person committing the act has a financial profit motive, the public would like to see genuine bad actors get punished, etc). Or does the CFAA not apply because this isn't a protected resources?

Maybe it could count as "knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a protected computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access, and by means of such conduct furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything of value".[0]

But they only bring out that kind of prosecutorial initiative and creativity, if you downloaded a bunch of academic articles after previously identifying yourself as a bit of a troublemaker (Aaron Swartz). Who cares about some old immigrant's restaurant? OK, enough cynicism for today..

[0] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030

Post reply on HN