Posts tagged Allegedly
Troubling Google Contractor Allegedly Caught Vandalizing Open Street Map
Jan 16th
The official blog of Open Street Map reports tonight that someone at a range of Google IP addresses in India has been editing the collaboratively made map of the world in some very unhelpful ways, like moving and deleting information and reversing the direction of one-way streets on the map.
The IP addresses match the same ones that were caught last week running a long-term scam wherein telephone directory listings were scraped from a crowd-sourced phone directory in Kenya called Mocality. A Google contractor then systematically called those phone numbers claiming to have a paid placement deal jointly offered by the Kenyan company and Google! A Google spokesperson told BoingBoing on Friday that the company was “mortified” by the discovery – but now it appears the same Google contractor may be behind mayhem rippling throughout one of the world’s biggest maps. Google says it’s investigating these latest allegations.
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Open Street Map said tonight that two user accounts have been found vandalizing streets in New York, London and elsewhere since at least last Thursday. Full investigation of the actions may take time, OSM said, because at least 17 user accounts have accessed OSM from those Google IP adresses more than 100,000 times over the past year.
Is this a Google contractor with something against crowdsourced projects? That’s one thing both targets have in common. Neither offense seems short-lived or trivial though, either.
Open Street Map is like Wikipedia for world maps. It’s a fabulous and inspiring project, I think, but not everyone agrees.
In August 2010, Open Street Map co-founder Steve Coast wrote a long blog post titled Enough is Enough: Disinfecting OSM from Poisonous People. That post has been read by almost 175,000 people.
Coast said that divisive conversations “have spilled over now from poisonous people merely making life difficult on the mailing list, to paralyzing the project and even systematically corrupting the data we serve out using bots…Many (if not most or all) of the key people in OSM are feeling drained, distracted and upset. Some are talking of hiatus or resign. These are the key people who write code, build things, maintain things and run our working groups.”
Three months after writing that post, Coast left the company that supports Open Street Map and became the Principal Architect at Bing Maps.
Coast was one of three signers of tonight’s blog post that concludes as follows:
“These actions are somewhat baffling given our past good relationship with Google which has included donations and Summer of Code work. As a community we take the quality of our data extremely seriously and look forward to an explanation from Google and an undertaking to not allow this kind of thing to happen in the future.”
In response to our request for comment, a Google spokesperson said tonight, “We’re aware of OpenStreetMap’s claims that vandalism of OSM is occurring from accounts originating at a Google IP address. We are investigating the matter and will have more information as soon as possible.”
It will be interesting to see how the company responds to this, the second serious allegation of wrongdoing by one of its contracting companies inside of a week.
It would be nice if Open Street Map could continue to flourish and grow. Bad actors may be an inevitable issue for an open site building collective knowledge at scale, but it would be good if people sitting in Google offices around the world were all helping instead of hurting such efforts. Reversing the direction on one-way streets is a particularly nasty thing to do.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Facebook Allegedly Hired PR Firm to Smear Google
May 13th
According to the Daily Beast, Facebook has hired public relations firm Burston-Marsteller to pitch negative stories about Google to media outlets.
The campaign was uncovered on May 3, when blogger Chris Soghoian posted emails he had received from BM’s John Mercurio. “I wanted to gauge your interest in authoring an op-ed this week for a top-tier media outlet on an important issue that I know you’re following closely,” Mercurio wrote.
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“The topic: Google’s sweeping violations of user privacy. Google, as you know, has a well-known history of infringing on the privacy rights of America’s Internet users. Not a year has gone by since the founding of the company where it has not been the focus of front-page news detailing its zealous approach to gathering information – in many cases private and identifiable information – about online users.”
Soghoian asked who was paying BM, but was rebuffed. He declined to pursue the opportunity.
The PR campaign had been fairly extensive, according to USA Today. The campaign was “about how an obscure Google Gmail feature –Social Circle– ostensibly tramples the privacy of millions of Americans and violates federal fair trade rules.”
(Read our coverage of Circles.)
Google has recently been knocked back on its heels due to a raid of its offices in Seoul, South Korean and facing a U.S. Senate hearing about location-tracking in its Android phones.
According to the Daily Beast:
“Confronted with evidence, a Facebook spokesman last night confirmed that Facebook hired Burson, citing two reasons: first, it believes Google is doing some things in social networking that raise privacy concerns; second, and perhaps more important, Facebook resents Google’s attempts to use Facebook data in its own social-networking service.”
To say that Facebook accusing Google of mishandling privacy issues is hypocritical would be an understatement. (Along the lines of Baby Face Nelson accusing John Dillinger of a lax attitude toward firearm safety.) The opposite would be equally true.
In jabbing at the motes in each other’s eyes, both companies have clearly gone blind.
Other sources: Boingboing
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Anonymous Allegedly Targets Tunisia, Zimbabwe
Jan 4th
The 4Chan-allied, Wikileaks-defending hacker group Anonymous has apparently launched a distributed denial of service attack against government sites in Tunisia and Zimbabwe. The official Tunisian government site and that of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali were both targeted in the North African country. In Zimbabwe, the first lady’s website and the official Zimbabwean government site and ministry of finance site were targeted.
Both attacks seem tangentially related to Wikileaks, on whose behalf the group has previously targeted Visa, PayPal and others. In the case of Zimbabwe, Grace Mugabe is suing the Zimbabwean newspaper The Standard for $15 for publishing a cable asserting she is benefiting from illegal diamond sales. Tunisia has blocked access to the primary Wikileaks cable site.
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Sophos security firm quoted a statement found on a number of sites associated with Anonymous.
“The Tunisian government wants to control the present with falsehoods and misinformation in order to impose the future by keeping the truth hidden from its citizens. We will not remain silent while this happens. Anonymous has heard the claim for freedom of the Tunisian people. Anonymous is willing to help the Tunisian people in this fight against oppression. It will be done. It will be done.
“This is a warning to the Tunisian government: attacks at the freedom of speech and information of its citizens will not be tolerated. Any organization involved in censorship will be targeted and will not be released until the Tunisian government hears the claim for freedom to its people.”
Neither country is well-known for its embrace of the web, though there are certainly more Tunisians online than Zimbabweans. Given the relative lack of importance the web has in these countries, the strategy in attacking them is opaque. A dry run on a more web-centric country? The efficacy of the Anonymous DDoS attacks overall is uncertain, especially when the goals are far from clear.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Servicewrap SEO Expert Allegedly Caught With His Hand On Leg Of Client; By … – 1888 Press Release (press release)
Aug 30th
 StuckOn |
Servicewrap SEO Expert Allegedly Caught With His Hand On Leg Of Client; By …
1888 Press Release (press release) It has been alleged that during a client website optimization session, to help build a customers 1st page ranking positions; that one of their SEO … SEO Experts – Search Engine Optimisation – Bruce Clay Australia – Sydney CBD How to Approach Life after Optimisation – 10 Things to Remember Should you look for local SEO companies Cheshire? |
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Webmasters Allegedly Using SEO Marketing to Secure Sales and Profit Online – SBWire (press release)
Jul 13th
 High Position (blog) |
Webmasters Allegedly Using SEO Marketing to Secure Sales and Profit Online
SBWire (press release) However, the key to success in internet marketing is to understand one basic fact- SEO. SEO or search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your … New Writer Joins Cleveland SEO Firm SEO Boot Camp 2: Positions Aren't Everything Local SEO is The Key for Business Success |
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