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Comment by hn8726 | Hacker News Reader

Or one of the users helpfully updated the business profile with the phone number, since they had it and thought it might be useful for some

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Well in the screenshot it clearly states : "Your phone number was Updated by Google."

That doesn't really sound like it was any users input.

I think that's what it always says — even when the business owners submits a change it's just a request, and the actual update is — technically — done by Google.

Then the text does not have purpose - when it shows something different?

Internally, I assume there would be an "updated and immutable per Legal Dept" status.

That is what it says when you do it though.

Random users can update business profile numbers and Google publishes them without asking the number's owner for permission? Seems like a huge oversight.

Also a nice opportunity to steal a company's business.

Didn't some food delivery service get their own phone numbers listed for various restaurants a few years ago?

Yes. I always bring this up when people in forums start talking about using these scumbag food-delivery operators.

Not sure about phone numbers, but some of them were creating "websites" for restaurants.

It is so ridiculous how that works. Just imagine for a second that you make a lieferando fake website and bring that online and somehow manage to make the URL look alike. How quickly the lawsuits would be on your ass. Yet according to one of the top level comments, nothing is done here, when lieferando does this and even throws in some identity theft.

If the owner isn't registered with Google business, yes. Other users (local guides) are asked to confirm the change.

If they are registered, the request goes to the business owner to approve in my experience. We used to get lots of phantom requests telling us our opening hours had changed but if you're registered you can just decline them.

This sounds like you're either forced to work with them, or they can just publish pretty much anything and claim plausible deniability about whether it's true or not?

I guess but what's the alternative? Either leave the info out or make maps paid to cover the cost of human reviewers.

The alternative is just only including info from registered businesses. If a third party provides info on an unregistered business, Google could reach out to the business to confirm and ask if they want to register. Unless they say yes, they can just not include it. Having a smaller set of correct information is better than a larger set of mixed correct and incorrect information is better for pretty much everyone...other than Google, of course.

I am a Local Guide and Google never prompts me to confirm anything.

Local Guides are ordinary unpaid Google accounts who submit reviews, photos, and other edits as I’ve detailed here. We are sometimes prompted to answer questions, but only with a blank to fill in.

https://support.google.com/maps/answer/7084895?hl=en

Google says "We review all the edits you make."

Go maps app > contribute > answer yes / no questions to help others

You’d think users can update business information on Google Maps. Instead, most of the times when you correct, say, working hours, it just gets rejected by the business owner who wants people to keep traveling there in the evening just to be turned away or see the closed doors because their staff goes home early every day.

But wait, there’s more crowdsourcing!

Google Maps actually processes historical data about how busy the location is throughout the hours and each day of the week.

You can find this rendered as a little bar graph with a blurb describing the current estimate.

This is believed to be aggregated from everyone’s Android devices reporting their locations in a very small radius.

Also, Maps asks its users to answer extended questions about amenities. Such as: parking types, accessibility features, kid-friendly, vegan/vegetarian.

When I am on board a bus or light rail train, there is information about how full it is, what temperature, accessibility, etc. They are tracked in real time because the transit authority shares their live telemetry with Google. Once, Google had demonstrably wrong schedule information and I discovered that it reflected the official website’s version. (It was reporting every train canceled, but they were actually running.)

When I worked in an office in 2012, we were trying to get our arms around various listings in 3rd party "Yellow Pages" publications, on paper and online. It seems that compiling business listings has been around a long time. And every business needs a Social Media manager to be aware of their footprint and manage multiple sites like this. Yelp, TripAdvisor, you name it.

In a dense area where there’s 5 shops within less than a stone’s throw (pardon my reference) away from each other or on different floors of a building, this mechanism does not work. Besides, if the place is “not busy”, that’s when I want to go—who likes to wait in queues?

There’s a (somewhat dramatic) TED talk about this oversight from a few years ago: https://youtu.be/5c6AADI7Pb4

You can also change the address of a business, or mark them closed.

Not an oversight, illegal publishing of PI obtained without permission.

They got the permission to publish it. Are they required to verify the number ownership though?

The tricky part is that the most straight forward verification -- call the number, ask "is this Bob's Shop?" -- fails immediately if Alice picks up and says "yes".

The author of the article and owner of the data says he does not give permission, so no, I think they don't.

Only businesses have rights and thus may need to give permission. Individuals are considered common property.

Laws are useless when you live in a country that doesn't care about enforcing them.

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