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Ability to Flag Edits as malicious or suspicious

Today I came across a slew of salon "closures" in a town in my state. (Images are attached) After the first fifteen or so that were DEFINITELY still open, it became clear that a competing salon had marked every other competitor in the area as closed. I wish I had the ability to flag edits as malicious or suspicious, so that users who bulk-edit information for personal gain can have their accounts penalized. I would see this enacted as temporary suspension from the ability to make edits .

 

 salon 2.pngsalon1.pngsalon3.pngsalon4.png

15 Comments
Connect Moderator

I think it will anyhow be useful to tag a Google moderator in these cases @Kwiksatik, as they are probably able to pass it on to team members who are able to check in the backend which LG marked all of those businesses are closed (and then take appropriate action).

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Former Google Contributor
Status changed to: Needs information

Hi @Kwiksatik,

 

Thanks for sharing with us your thoughts.

 

It really valuable for your concerns regarding the correctness of information.

 

Much appreciated for providing handy information, @JanVanHaver

 

Just to check, from what I understood is that in case a suspcted edit would be noticed, your idea is a third person as well as the owner with the edited business to be able to flag, correct?

 

Please do not hesitate to correct my thoughts. 

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Level 7

I just when to look up the movies at my local theater [ https://goo.gl/maps/QNVRxnsQaCC2 ] only to find that someone had SPAMed the url for the theater with a link to FindMeCinema.com instead of the actual site. I've had issues with Local Guides in the area before posting watermarked photos with ads. And when that failed, they started posting pictures of places with a logo-ed vehicle conspicuously in the spot. There needs to be an integrated way to report SPAM on maps and a speedy way to correct it. I also should not need to be a Level 7 contributor to at least flag an issue. There should also be an audit trail so that edits, editors, and flagged issues could be correlated. I'm more than happy as a contributor to review suspect entries. 

Former Google Contributor

Hi @CGallaty,

 

Thank you for reaching out to us!

 

We appreciate your endeavor and concerns you shared. Follow up to that, please make sure to check the post on How to identify and report fraud on Google Maps.

 

I have moved your suggestion to Ability to Flag Edits as malicious or suspicious, as both ideas may have a similar way of thought.

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Level 7

The distinction here is that the issue logging at this point is focused on the location as opposed to the data or the editor. It's one thing to state that an entry is wrong. We have some granularity when it comes to things like images, but not so much on data items. There where similar issues with things like Google+. i.e. there is a difference between a new Local Guide getting confused and making an incorrect edit. It's more serious when the change itself proves malicious or terms violating behavior. Ideally, this would be a distributed system where multiple folks could identify issues and perhaps more senior contributors could review this, but it would result in 'strikes' on the offending account. If you get to a specific point all if that contributors edits are flagged for review and they are demoted or removed to prevent further damage. Focusing on things entry by entry, edit, by edit is like playing whack a mole and a weak solution to what is likely to be an increasing issue. This can be done in such a way that we are not requiring users to police users individually, but it's unavoidable. There are folks out there looking to game the system and there need to be distributed tools to deal with this. I'm sure many folks are happy to help, but we need to reduce the 'friction' that presently exists in going through and finding out how to property report an issue. 

Former Google Contributor

It is really detailed, thank you for sharing with us your point of view, @CGallaty!

 

We will check if the regarded philosophy can be implied if anywhere possible. : ]

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Level 10

@Kwiksatik  Thank you.  This is the info I wanted about the malicious behavior in Google Maps. Now I will be on guard watching for such activity.  Good post! 

Connect Moderator

@sonnyNg I completely lost this request for more information in other notifications. I am so sorry for the delay! To answer your queries:

 

My original intent was only for the third party to be able to mark an edit as suspicious. 

 

However, having seen other situations since originally submitting this idea, I think that allowing the business to mark edits as suspicious in the Google My Business interface would be a second, and more direct way to find suspicious edits. This could help much with the vandalism issues I have observed, while empowering the business owner to protect their business, and possibly raise engagement in the GMB interface. As a final supporting point, although we now have the business redressal form for businesses, I suspect this would handle a significant number of the more vague complaints which result from business owners not being fully informed about how the edit process work, while wanting to address this specific issue. 

Connect Moderator

@CGallaty  You addressed the point exactly!

 

I do not have any knowledge of how Maps is coded, but having idea from my own experience in coding, my hope is this:

 

When one of my edits is denied, it shows as denied in my queue. If a number of edits are marked as malicious in a given period of time, it could trigger some sort action, a red flag, review, freeze, or automated warning email.

 

However, my full visualization of implementation would start with the ability to mark an edit as malicious. In the case of my examples, I would have marked every single edit as malicious, resulting in several negatives in a matter of an hour.

Level 7
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