
How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business at Will - cryptoz
http://www.wired.com/2014/07/hacking-google-maps/
======
csandreasen
Several years ago my spouse and I took a vacation abroad and booked a tour
with a local company. The guide was really shocked when I told him that I went
with their company because they had negative reviews. All of the touring
companies had fairly amateur web sites, but with the exception of this
company, all of the Yelp reviews were glowing, 5-star, nothing-went-wrong-
with-this-trip reviews. His company had fairly good reviews, with one or two
one-star reviews from angry customers that cancelled at the last minute and
didn't get their deposit back.

I expect a few bad reviews - nobody runs their business in such a manner that
every customer is satisfied 100% of the time. If I see nothing but outstanding
reviews, I'm going to assume they're all fake.

~~~
steven777400
Especially key is also what the bad reviews are for. Like in your case, you
identify the bad reviews are unreasonable expectations. Bad reviews with
claimed reasonable cause may be worth a little more pause.

Also important is number of reviews. I'd rather have a solid 4/5 product with
100 reviews than a straight 5 star product reviewed only 3 times.

~~~
r00fus
Well, if there is a bad review that has a response from the company, that
reflects well in my opinion, unless there are a large number of them.

Not sure if it's possible for vendors on Yelp to reply to their customers in
the forum, but I see this all the time on Amazon.

------
chdir
If you are running a popular place, whether you like it or not, you'll end up
on Google controlled listings. Unfortunately, there's little help for a non-
tech savvy business owner to fix problems with listings or fake reviews or
even removal of genuine reviews. This is an area where they need to be held
accountable. If you are wielding so much power, you need to handle it
responsibly and error in favor of business owners rather than community. Most
web companies prefer the approach of 'act now, apologize later' or maybe never
to garner users.

I've had so many web services (including Facebook) create accounts using my
email address without my approval (maybe because the other person used phone
verification). Now if I want to claim back my email address on that web
service, they put the burden on me to provide a photo ID. Using my email
address is partially impersonating me because my contacts might have uploaded
their address book and FB allows that willy nilly.

~~~
tedunangst
If it's your email, can't you just send a password reset?

~~~
chdir
With Facebook, no. My guess is that if you've verified with a phone number,
they make it difficult to reset by an unverified email (they favor the fake
user and assume that the email was entered incorrectly). Moreover, I don't
want to take over someone's account if they've been ignorant about entering
the email incorrectly. They still own the data. However I do report that I
didn't create this account. Services like FB blacklist the email address in
that case. As a result, I can't use that email in future without giving a
photo ID (never gonna happen).

------
frankydp
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 Washington state can deny a detailed and documented road/POI
change in Florida.

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

Sorry if this is a tad off topic.

~~~
freyfogle
Out of curiosity, have you tried OpenStreetMap? You get the same enjoyment of
editing without the "random/poisonous moderation process", plus the data you
contribute is open, rather than private property.

~~~
Crito
Do you know what OpenStreetMap has done to avoid the toxic editing community?
Wikipedia also has a problem with a toxic community; are they doing something
different?

~~~
Vik1ng
Not so much what OpenStreetMap has done, but simply due to the nature of the
project one big difference is, that OSM maps what is on the ground. So there
isn't going to be a discussion if that river is relevant or not, if there is a
river you map it. Other things like opening hours here are usually also easy
to verify, IF you do so. So it will be more if it belongs into the database or
not, but even if it doesn't there is often no big harm if tags aren't misused.

And then there are Quality assurance tools:
[http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Quality_assurance](http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Quality_assurance)

Right now most of them are more geared toward detecting accidental errors, but
it is pretty safe to say that once OSM becomes more popular there will also be
tools optimized to detect vandalism.

I also feel like it's a lot easier to get in touch with the community, at
least here in Germany:
[http://www.openstreetmap.de/community.html](http://www.openstreetmap.de/community.html)
I actually still haven't found a simple German Wikipedia Forum where I could
just discuss a page, which is something that really helps new users.

------
nicolethenerd
In case any of you have a business w/ a physical location, yext.com sells a
service that lets you manage these details (business hours, location, phone #,
etc) across several different sites (Bing, Mapquest, Yahoo, etc + ~50 others),
rather than handling them all individually.

(Disclaimer: my partner works there - but I don't get a commission or anything
:-) Just seemed relevant to the discussion)

~~~
Gracana
Can yext do anything to protect you from attacks like those mentioned in the
linked article?

~~~
eightofdiamonds
They can lock down the listing so that only you can edit them with their
partner sites. But it wouldn't work in this case since they are not partnered
with Google. We just had a presentation from them at my work a few weeks ago.

~~~
mcguire
Officially "taking ownership" of a record with Google doesn't prevent
community edits?

------
drivingmenuts
This is an example of one of the major problems of crowd-sourcing: trust.

There is no way to verify that the integrity of the submitter, who could be
giving wrong information due to malice, incompetence, or as a prank. There's
entirely too much trust in crowdsourcing.

~~~
Cthulhu_
It works very well for Wikipedia though, but that's because Wikipedia has much
more people that care about the information and maintain it. Google Maps lacks
that community feeling of providing correct information, probably because it's
owned and operated by Google.

Maybe local business organizations can provide help in this, have a few people
dedicate some of their time to making sure all listings are correct.
Alternatively, counties / local governments could take this responsibility
upon them; after all, local governments dislike seeing local businesses go out
of business or get less customers because they can't be found on Google.

At the same time, Google could do better in verifying changes; cross-check
them with official address books and business registries and the like.

~~~
cratermoon
Except Wikipedia doesn't work "very well". It works OK for most subjects, but
there are some areas and points of view that are no-go areas because of the
prevailing values of the major editors, and even turf wars. Mentioned not to
long ago here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7700546](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7700546)

------
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?

~~~
scintill76
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](http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030)

------
boobsbr
One more reason why I don't trust POIs I find on Google Maps.

I always try to find the actual business' page to check for phones and opening
and closing hours.

~~~
bhartzer
You can't even rely on a business' website anymore, though. You have to
actually call them on the phone and talk to a real person there, at the
business. Too often even the business owner doesn't have time to update their
website or get the "web guy" (read: his brother in law's son) to update the
website in a timely manner.

~~~
twoodfin
If I were Google, Yelp, or Facebook, I'd give serious consideration to selling
local businesses pre-created, theme-able web sites on a subscription basis.
They already have essentially all the content such sites would need, and
better designers than most small businesses would have access to.

I regularly run into local places that use their Facebook page as their _de
facto_ virtual storefront, but that format could be much better customized for
individual business varieties' needs, even putting aside the limitations of
living in Facebook's garden.

~~~
mike_hearn
They already do: Facebook and Google both have a "pages" feature which is
designed for exactly that. Most businesses don't seem to want their
Facebook/Google page to be their official website though, perhaps they think
it looks unprofessional.

~~~
gnaritas
It is unprofessional.

~~~
owenmarshall
It's unprofessional for a restaurant or a mechanic or a pet groomer to have
their Facebook/Google page as their official web presence?

How can it be "unprofessional"? That's simply not their profession. Why should
we judge them on that?

What an odd comment.

~~~
gnaritas
It's unprofessional for any business to use a Facebook page as their website.
A business that wants to appear professional has their own domain and their
own presence on the web; Facebook pages are for marketing, not hosting your
website. A professional presence doesn't have another company's branding all
over it.

Your comment is far odder than mine.

------
will_brown
It would seem to me these types of _hacks_ are very risky in light of the
recent lawsuits involving bogus Yelp reviews.

Specifically, Yelp was forced by the courts to reveal the real identities
behind bogus reviews, and further individuals have been held personally liable
for defamation.

Though the Google Map _hacks_ may not fall under a cause of action for
defamation (thought it may), certainly I could see rather large judgments
under a theory of tortious interference with business contracts/business
relationships. These suits permit not just damages for economic loss, but also
punitive damages.

------
troymc
Aren't there large-scale services to whom a small business owner can pay an
annual subscription fee, where the service will monitor the accuracy of their
Google, Yelp, Open Street Map, Wikipedia, Yellowpages, etc. information?

The article mentions some person on a retainer who does this on a shop-by-shop
basis, but it seems to me that this is something that can be automated and
scaled.

~~~
mierle
GoDaddy's Get Found does this; [http://getfound.com](http://getfound.com).
Disclaimer: I work at GoDaddy on Get Found.

------
Semaphor
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.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
What exactly is yelp telling you? I'm something of a foodie and am stunned at
how inaccurate the reviews are for most restaurants. Most of the reviews seem
to come from a minority "elite" users who are chronic whiners and come off as
terribly immature. Its just incredible what people ding establishments for.
"Fries came late, this place sucks! Zero stars!"

Some people think the issue with yelp and google reviews is trust. Its not.
Its entitlement and a lack of proper criteria. The types of people who
gravitate towards these reviews and become frequent reviewers are often people
with poor taste and a lack of understanding of what they are reviewing.
They're not crowd-sourced Robger Eberts. They're your cranky local paper's
film critic who thinks 'naughty language' is the most unforgivable sin.

If anything, services like yelp have made me appreciate the art of criticism
and a lot of my dining decisions are now done via professional critics with
good reputations instead of the usual gang of misanthropes and weirdos who
dominate yelp.

~~~
electrum
Do you have any examples of awesome restaurants that have poor ratings on
Yelp? Assuming a sufficient number of reviews, Yelp ratings are at least
"directionally accurate". In my experience, a place with four stars is decent
and two stars is poor.

Many Asian restaurants in the Bay Area that I like are 3 or 3.5 stars, though
many others with that rating are mediocre. But on the low or high end, it
seems very accurate.

~~~
snowwrestler
Yelp seems pretty useless for mid-range or focused restaurants. Think of a
Mexican place that is inexpensive, but has great food that comes out in
plastic baskets. Their Yelp page will be full of complaints about the plastic
baskets.

There's a great ice cream place near me that gets complaints about their
customer service. You're buying an ice cream cone! It takes like 3 sentences;
how much service do you need? No joke, there are 2-star reviews like "Stopped
by after dinner; the line was out the door and the owner seemed tired. The ice
cream was delicious though."

------
jokoon
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 that article.

I'm sure even governments would not want to give the data of businesses
opening/closing for free.

~~~
dclowd9901
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.

~~~
jokoon
> There's no excuse for technological illiteracy or ignorance

I know the internet is much more popular since the last 10 years, but I don't
think everyone is really up to it. There are still big opportunities to scam
people who don't have the minimum of tech savyness: viruses, etc.

The internet is still a jungle with not enough laws.

~~~
MadManE
Why are laws the answer? If something is in a legal/moral gray area now, then
how many people will stop doing it when it becomes a true illegality?

Why not just have better defenses against things like this in the first place,
that work whether the activity is deemed "wrong" or not?

~~~
jokoon
There are many areas of the law which have been untouched for decades, and
only starts now to create new cases because of how the internet works.
Couchsurfing for example. Also scamming has never been so easy with the
internet.

I'm not saying you really need laws, but regulations might improve the
situation. There's nothing really illegal there, but it would be nice to see
google being liable for its data if it reach a certain size of audience. In
this case it's false advertising of defamation (unintentional).

Google map is a product, even if it hides behind a free thing "use with
caution". Most people can get along with it, but if it starts to have a big
impact on society, people will indeed become wary and learn, but not everyone
will do.

I guess you can say "let the nature do its work", but that's not always how
government see things, and that's not why the government exists. Strong
government can do big improvements, I think. It depends, that's a balance to
find.

------
hyperliner
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 causes these
fringe problems. Fringe for Google, lethal for the business owner.

I think it is in Google's best interest to improve the process through which
they deal with the problems, and maybe even help prosecute those who created
them. Unfortunately, I also think they see these as collateral damage in a
battle to create the most automated system that works 99.99999% of the time.

On the other hand, it is a shame this biz owner had no computer expertise nor
knew to take care of his online reputation and information. Just like people
and Linkedin or github, businesses need to take responsibility. As in any
transitions, some people will be left behind, and it seems there is not a lot
we can do to avoid that.

~~~
VikingCoder
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.

~~~
benihana
Did you read the article? This isn't a case of the owner not caring; he didn't
know that google maps was incorrectly reporting his hours. It took a phone
call from a customer. _And that 's the problem_ \- why would he ever think
that people weren't coming to his restaurant because a map service messed up
his hours? As is clear from this article, that was very low on his checklist
of things that might be killing my business.

~~~
pmontra
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?

~~~
wutbrodo
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.

~~~
VikingCoder
...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.

~~~
owenmarshall
"The known, the unknown, and the underknown" \- TMBG

"as we know, there are known knowns[...] there are known unknowns[...] But
there are also unknown unknowns" \- Donald Rumsfeld

It's easy for business-minded techies to understand the impact of "that online
stuff". It's very likely that a septuagenarian restauranteur simply doesn't
fathom its potential impact.

~~~
VikingCoder
Agreed, and unfortunately for him, his competition WILL understand it. It's
survival of the fittest. The fit septuagenarians are the ones who listen to
their grand-kids who tell them they have to get "online."

------
southflorida
if google is going to take it upon themselves to list a business they should
be held accountable and the information should be accurate. google listed the
business without his consent and it was incorrect information. i hope he
wins... google listing a business that is closed on weekends could have been
detrimental in this case. the business owner doesnt need to change because
technology has evolved beyond his understanding, google should have never
listed the business to begin with. google = giant scraper site of
misinformation.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> the business owner doesnt need to change because technology has evolved
> beyond his understanding

I agree with the general sentiment of your comment, but I disagree with that
line in particular.

If you disagree, please sent your reply via the Pony Express to the Harlem
Public House; I shall check with the barman therein to see if your letter
arrives every other Sunday.

~~~
mcguire
Note: IIRC, the pony express was a transport mechanism for the US mail
service, which has the same API today. And if you do send a letter to someone
C/O the Harlem Public House, said establishment still exists and is willing to
hold mail, and you do check it periodically, you will very likely get the
letter.

------
sirdogealot
They were in business for 40 years... and Google maps just recently started
incorrectly listing their hours.

I highly doubt that the google maps error caused or even contributed to the
downfall of their apparently well established business.

------
hnriot
The world is a better place without a restaurant serving bear meat.

~~~
pests
If you read the article you would see it no longer serves bear meat.

~~~
trhway
it was still serving lion, horse, kangaroo... Good riddance. Time has changed
and the owner just didn't notice it. He blames it on Google while his business
simply fell out of fashion.

------
j_m_b
"The Serbian Crown closed its doors after nearly 40 years in the same
location." Oh sure... blame it on Google Maps telling people you aren't open
on Sat, Sun, Mon. I guess your regulars, who you've built up over 40 years,
don't know when you're open unless they look at Google maps. Even the owner
himself says "If you’re going there, it’s because you’ve planned to go there."
I imagine his problem could be more accurately blamed on the decor (it looks
hideous on the outside and that doesn't bode well for the inside) and the low
quality of food being served (unless there are lion,kangaroo and bear farms in
Virginia than that meat has probably been frozen).

With that being said, Google maps is far from perfect. They really should have
a way for business owners that they list to be able to update their store
information, especially for small businesses. How hard would it be to
implement a callback system that allowed an owner to make simple updates to
hours of business or to delete false/inaccurate listings? I guess they're too
busy trying to find places in their code base to replace 'if' statements with
bayesian filtering.

~~~
vinceguidry
From the article:

Demonstrating causation between a bad Google Maps listing and Serbian Crown’s
decline is going to be hard, though. For one thing, the restaurant’s Yelp
listing—also a big factor in choosing a dinner reservation—is packed with
abysmal, almost frightening, reviews. And there are any number of reasons a
restaurant—even an old, established one—can fail, as Google’s lawyers pointed
out an angry June 17 motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

People don't read anymore.

~~~
woodchuck64
Does the article actually thoroughly discredit its own title? People don't
write anymore.

~~~
vinceguidry
The article didn't discredit anything. The title is "How Google Map Hackers
Can Destroy a Business at Will" not "How Google Map Hackers Destroyed Serbian
Crown".

~~~
vdaniuk
But the article didn't support the title. The title supported by the article
could be "How Google Map Hackers Can Contribute To The Demise Of The
Restaurant On A Downhill Trajectory". This is just one sensationalist title.

~~~
vinceguidry
Why so much hate on the headline? The article itself is perfectly reasonable,
so just read and digest that. It sounds like you want to just read the title
and understand everything.

~~~
cratermoon
I used to be a copy editor, back in the day when newspapers had copy editors.
One of the jobs of a copy editor back then was to write the headline, and
write an _accurate_ one. My chief editor was tough on me, too, and it was hard
to come up with a good headline that fit the space and was accurate. She often
changed just one word or tense and cleared things up, but now and then she'd
can my headline entirely and rewrite it.

Today? Online news sites don't care about headline accuracy, just SEO and
linkbait rating. They don't even really have to care about length, to an
extent. "Subject That Will Blow Your Mind and Change the Way You See the
World. Top All-time. You Won’t Believe Your Eyes. Watch."

So yes, headlines have gotten useless.

~~~
vinceguidry
The only reason I look at a headline anymore for is to see what the topic is.
They're not useless for that.

~~~
wutbrodo
Isn't the topic in this case supposedly "How Google Maps can Destroy a
Business at Will"? A topic that isn't supported by the article content (as
discussed upthread)? That seems pretty "useless" to me.

~~~
vinceguidry
The topic is how local business is affected by Internet technologies. The
given title conveys that perfectly well, at least to me.

