Scammers are changing the contact details for banks on Google Maps

I hope Google uses their Duplex tech to review phone number changes though, should be easy to call the existing phone number a few times.

If they do that and the correct information changes without them updating, they're (rightfully) going to get sued by those businesses. By having it editable by anyone, they avoid that, even if it results in the information being wrong more often.

Proper ways to deal with this would involve employing actual human beings for moderation, for filling in / updating the map data, or for providing support and a verification process to businesses trying to correct their data.

All three of these solutions cost more money than the status quo and are things that Google doesn't really do anywhere, so I doubt this is going to get better anytime soon.

Here are a few problems with that:

1) Businesses also have incentives to spam by adding lots of vaguely-related words to names, categories and description.

2) Businesses forget that they claimed the listing, and so stale info remains locked for too long.

My removal of the website got rejected. I think I needed to offer proof of some sort.

Adding info is easier: my second edit was adding opening hours to a shop. No proof needed. My submitted hours were not the official opening hours, because the shop always opens 15 minutes too late.

I work on maps spam. I was wondering if you could dig up a link to the maps business, and include a rough idea of when this occurred.

Thanks!

My small company gets three or four phone calls or e-mails a week from people who think it's a different business, and each time I ask, they say they got the number from Google.

Looking at my e-mail, the most recent one was from someone who wanted to place a big catering order with a Subway sandwich shop about 2,000 miles away.

I don't blame Google exclusively, though. For almost ten years, Facebook has been telling people that I am a large building in another state.

How do you know it's a lie?

Accuracy doesn't pay. Giving results that are "pretty close" keeps people searching and searching and searching for what they need, and racks up the ad dollars.

Similarly Google was never about accuracy per say but indexing. It says what people are saying essentially. People may say that Ted Cruz is the zodiac killer but he would have been way too young in reality - amusing as the actual police sketch resemblance is. It just isn't capable of knowing the truth and that isn't its true purpose any more than a regex is to give you dictionary definitions.

I do wonder what would make a better system for maintaining these sorts of things. The whole identification and authentication systems in place are honestly pretty bad in legacy systems both technically and legislatively - combines with rightful concern about abuse potential in upgrades make it seem like something which will take generations to solve.

(You won't get the HN karma, but we plan to implement karma sharing for cases where multiple submitters contributed.)

Google maps has an image capture from May 2018 with their sign up.

Some companies decide that they should have a physical address for places like Yelp. I suspect you have to have an address for people to review your business.

Is it a scam? In some sense yes but what do you if all you want to do is deliver?

Totally unrelated to people scamming others on Google, but I love little bits of telephone trivia like this. A large plumber and an unrelated large handyman company in my hometown metro both have the same style of phone number: "just dial your area code then [seven digits]."

One other thing we had growing up in that area were the concept of "metro numbers." Back in the day, the area was divided up into three different incumbents and it wasn't always the case that a person physically near you would have a number you could call for free. So metro numbers were ones in specific exchanges that anyone in the six-county area could call with no toll charges. Since all metro numbers were in a handful of exchanges and, because the three old incumbents crossed area codes as well, didn't always follow area code rules (e.g. you could be physically in area code 123 but get a metro number in area code 198), you'll see old businesses with old numbers in area codes where they "shouldn't be."

My mobile number is like this. It is a metro number and has an area code and prefix of one side of the metro area but if you look it up in any of the telco databases, those listings say it is "homed" to two counties away in a different area code.

https://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx