'Inside job' alleged as thousands of Google+ and Maps listings hijacked

Anyone with Google+ account can submit changes to 'verified' business listings for approval - but target site owner denies involvement

• Samuel Gibbs
• 
  
• theguardian.com, Wednesday 15 January 2014 08.07 EST

Mass Google+ hotel listing hijack affected big name hotels and bed and breakfasts a like.

Thousands of hotel listings on Google Maps and Google+ have been hijacked to point to an external commercial site, leading to allegations of an 'inside job'.
The official Google+ pages of hotels and guest houses across the globe including the US and UK have had details, including the external web address for their pages, changed by an unknown third party. That has effectively "poisoned" search results for those properties, because the Google+ listings are used to populate Google Maps listings and Google search results, as well as other Google services.
The web addresses listed were altered to point to a third-party booking service.
In one example, “the URLs for the hotel’s official website leads to “courtyardmarriott.roomstobook.info” rather than the hotel’s actual page here within the Marriott.com domain,” said Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land who discovered the hijacks.
The majority of the verified listings were altered to direct visitors to websites Roomstobook.net and Roomstobook.info, both of which then redirect to the third-party booking service Hotelswhiz.com, or to hotel pages within the Roomstobook websites.
"We were not involved in the hijackings and we are dealing with the fallout. We reported the redirect issue to Google when we spotted it on 8 January," Karim Mawani, director of HotelsWhiz.com told the Guardian.
"Because of the backlinks [from the Google+ pages through the .info domains to the hotelswhiz site] we have been penalised by Google and our site has been paralysed, so we are victims here," he said.
Mawani said that he and his company didn't know what or who carried out the modifications to the Google+ listings.
A search of Google+ listings also showed the domain Roomstobook.org being used, with over 4,000 listings affected in total.

Anyone can attempt a change

The Guardian has confirmed that anyone with a Google+ account - which can be obtained by registering a Gmail email - can submit a change to any detail of a Google+ Local page, whether verified or not, including the listed website address, phone number, physical address or name of the place. Users can also mark the place as closed, as a duplicate or flag inappropriate reviews or photos.

Anyone with a Google+ account can submit changes to business and place listings.

However once submitted, the change must be reviewed before being implemented on the listing.

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Google: Gmail users shouldn't expect email privacy. Claim made in court filing in attempt to head off class action lawsuit

Google: Gmail users shouldn't expect email privacy

Critics call revelation 'a stunning admission' as Google makes claim in court filing in attempt to head off class action lawsuit

• Dominic Rushe in New York
• The Guardian, Wednesday 14 August 2013

Google said the plaintiffs were making 'an attempt to criminalise ordinary business practices' that have been part of Gmail since it began. Photo: Walter Bieri

Gmail users have no "reasonable expectation" that their emails are confidential, Google has said in a court filing.
Consumer Watchdog, the advocacy group that uncovered the filing, called the revelation a "stunning admission." It comes as Google and its peers are under pressure to explain their role in the National Security Agency's (NSA) mass surveillance of US citizens and foreign nationals.
"Google has finally admitted they don't respect privacy," said John Simpson, Consumer Watchdog's privacy project director. "People should take them at their word; if you care about your email correspondents' privacy, don't use Gmail."
Google set out its case last month in an attempt to dismiss a class action lawsuit that accuses the tech giant of breaking wire tap laws when it scans emails in order to target ads to Gmail users.
That suit, filed in May, claims Google "unlawfully opens up, reads, and acquires the content of people's private email messages." It quotes Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman: "Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it."
"Unbeknown to millions of people, on a daily basis and for years, Google has systematically and intentionally crossed the 'creepy line' to read private email messages containing information you don't want anyone to know, and to acquire, collect, or mine valuable information from that mail," the suit claims.
In its motion to dismiss the case, Google said the plaintiffs were making "an attempt to criminalise ordinary business practices" that have been part of Gmail's service since its introduction. Google said "all users of email must necessarily expect that their emails will be subject to automated processing."
According to Google: "Just as a sender of a letter to a business colleague cannot be surprised that the recipient's assistant opens the letter, people who use web-based email today cannot be surprised if their communications are processed by the recipient's ECS [electronic communications service] provider in the course of delivery."


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