Posts tagged caught
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.
Sponsor
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
Apple’s iOS 5 Caught Speeding [Infographic]
Oct 28th
New Relic, a company that measures and manages the performance of Web applications, recently released the results of a study that examined the performance differences between mobile Safari on iOS 4 and iOS 5 on same model iPhones. The study concluded that the Safari browser loads pages three times faster on iPhones with iOS 5 than the Safari browser on iPhones with iOS 4.
New Relic came to their conclusions using two testing methods. The first test was uncontrolled and examined the average Web application response times that 3,000 randomly-sampled New Relic customers experienced. The New Relic team tracked the users’ browser performance when loading over 3,000 apps. The results of this test indicated that the average page load time was 4.1 seconds with iOS 5 and 9.6 seconds with iOS 4. Of note, this field test did not have the capability to gather data such as which carrier users were on or whether people were using 3G or Wi-Fi.
The second test was conducted in a controlled laboratory setting. One iPhone with iOS 5 was tested against another iPhone with iOS 4; each phone had identical hardware. In this lab test, Web pages loaded in an average time of 1.88 seconds on the iOS 5 phone and 6.34 seconds on the one with iOS 4.
The new iOS 5 was released on October 12. In addition to offering a faster Safari browser speed than iOS 4, the new operating system’s features include over 200 new features including iMessage, Notification Center, NewsStand, Twitter integration, and an improved Camera app. IPhone users can connect their device to iTunes in order to download the new operating system.
Sources include: [IBTimes , Product Reviews, & Apple]
Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal
View full post on Search Engine Journal
ISPs Caught Hijacking & Redirecting Search Results
Aug 8th
US internet providers hijacking users’ search queries from the New Scientist reports that several ISPs are allegedly hijacking searches conducted on search engines and redirecting in order to make a quick profit. How Does ISP Search Hijacking Work? A searcher would search for a keyword such…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Hugo Boss Next Big Name Caught Breaking Google T&Cs
Mar 8th
Seems outing big name websites for using methods against Google’s Terms and Conditions is the flavor of the month. Former Google Web Spam team member Hessam Lavi has outed Hugo Boss for using doorway pages.
Apparently, Hugo Boss has been using no script redirects to allow the search engines to see an optimized page for various items but push their shoppers to a sales page for the actual products. While it definitely breaches the T&Cs, the method really questions if showing the engine one page and a visitor another based on possible retargeting may be good for the user experience but bad for the search engine’s experience.
Click to read the rest of this post…
View full post on Search Engine Watch Blog
Google: We’re Working to Help Good Sites Caught by Spam Cleanup – Wired News
Mar 1st
 Digitaltrends.com |
Google: We're Working to Help Good Sites Caught by Spam Cleanup
Wired News Many well-known sites that pop up in search results despite having little good information, including Associated Content and Mahalo, were downgraded, according to an analysis by independent SEO software firm Sistrix. But other content manufacturers … Google's content farm crackdown causes collateral damage Has Google's Algorithm Update Improved Its Search Results? Google's Algorithm Changes–Will You Notice? |
View full post on SEO – Google News
JC Penney caught gaming Google – ITworld.com
Feb 14th
 The Business Insider |
JC Penney caught gaming Google
ITworld.com The retailer — or the SEO firm it hired and subsequently fired — engaged in the SEO-gaming practices of link buying and link trading, which can improve a … JC Penney Fires Back at Google and New York Times Over SEO Controversy Why You Should Avoid Black Hat SEO Link Schemes At All Costs J.C. Penney gets busted by Google |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Google Maps Street Views May Have Caught A Criminal
Nov 9th
The Telegraph reports the Derbyshire Police in the UK have released a photo of a man captured on Google’s Street Views as a possible suspect for theft of a car. There is a man standing by the stolen car who no one really recognizes and believes should be standing next to the car. The Street [...]
*** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above ***
View full post on Search Engine Land: News About Search Engines & Search Marketing
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? |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Servicewrap.net SEO Account Manager Caught On Hidden Camera ‘Dancing’ Whilst … – 1888 Press Release (press release)
Aug 23rd
|
Servicewrap.net SEO Account Manager Caught On Hidden Camera 'Dancing' Whilst …
1888 Press Release (press release) However, an insider within the company has suggested that the SEO Account Manager concerned has been forced to stay at home with the unwanted attention of … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
