Google Contractors Maliciously Tamper Competitor’s Data, Fired Immediately
There’s always a few bad apples out of a bunch of good ones. According to OpenStreetMap, an open source mapping project that is a direct competitor with Google Maps, user accounts that were attached to Google Internet addresses in India, were tampering with data.
Google was quick to address their claims and after a further investigation, found that it was two contractors who were “acting on behalf of themselves” and since then, “are no longer working on Google projects”. This definitely isn’t something the tech giant wants to happen, nor do they want the situation on their hands.
“The accusation from OpenStreet Map follows a widely reported incident in which users behind a Google IP address in India were caught scraping data from a Kenyan online business directory called Mocality. Last week, Google apologized for the incident. Then, on Monday evening, Mikel Maron, an OpenStreetMap (OSM) board member, told Wired that users had been vandalizing OpenStreetMap from the same IP address range in India.”
Google apologized and rectified the situation which really got their attention when project founder Steve Coast and System Admin Grant Slater, published a blog post about the accusation.
“Maron told Wired that the OSM braintrust noticed the vandalism last Thursday. In a standard procedure used when malicious alterations are suspected, OSM placed a stop on the account the next day, attempting to verify that the user is a real person and that he or she understands the open-source nature of OSM. Maron said that the stop was acknowledged early Monday — and that the user then continued to vandalize mapping data. Maron said that this was caught within a few hours, and that the system administrator then noticed that the user’s IP address was in the same range as the address Mocality had identified.”
Do you think the contractors were put up to it by Google or were they just some bad apples?
