Maryland Ruling Supports Anonymous Postings – Wendy Davis, MediaPost
“On the one hand, posters have a First Amendment right to retain their anonymity and not to be subject to frivolous suits for defamation brought solely to unmask their identity,” the court wrote. “On the other, viable causes of actions for defamation should not be barred in the Internet context.”
With the decision, Maryland joins courts in Arizona, California, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Texas, as well as the District of Columbia, that have ruled that anonymous commenters are entitled to legal safeguards before being unmasked, said Sam Bayard, assistant director of the digital rights group Citizen Media Law Project.
In-Stat: Smartphones To Be Mainstream By 2013 – Mark Walsh
Technology research firm In-Stat projects that smartphone sales will grow strongly over the next five years, accounting for 20% of all handsets globally by 2013 compared to 10% today.
In North America, the number of smartphones will increase 15% annually over the next five years, more than doubling to 62.3 million units in 2013. With prices coming down as the choice of smartphones increases, more than one-third of U.S. wireless users in 2008 said they plan to get a smartphone the next time they upgrade their phone. Today, 36% of U.S. subscribers already own one.
The Review Site Yelp Draws Some Outcries of Its Own – Claire Cain Miller, NYTimes.com
But as with other big sites that rely heavily on user reviews, like TripAdvisor, Amazon.com and CNet, Yelp is struggling to serve the competing needs of the reviewed businesses, some of whom advertise, and the users, who can safely and anonymously say anything they want.
Yelp has made some recent changes to please business owners. Yet it still refuses to investigate reviews accused of being inaccurate or permit businesses to respond to reviews on the site. Instead, the company operates on the premise that reviewers tend to be truthful and that greater accuracy will emerge from more reviews.
Google has been working hard recently at limiting the ability of bulk uploaders to spam the Maps Index. Their efforts have significantly cut the frequency of reports of large scale abuse.
However it appears that the new Yellow Pages are out and more than fingers walked on over to Google. Massive amounts of Remote Call Forwarding numbers and associated businesses have made their way into the Maps index. If the counts at the bottom of Google Maps are to be trusted at all, the numbers are well into the tens of thousands and could be over a hundred thousand entries. Regardless it is a lot of spam.
Cathy Rulloda describes the process thusly: “While the ultimate blame lies with the businesses who willingly providing false information to deceive consumers about their actual locations, the cloaking behind RCF numbers – which are then picked up by data providers like the Yellow Pages publishers, assigned zip codes (if no street addressees are provided), and then treated as trusted local businesses by Google – makes their entre’ into Maps easy.”
These records initially are listed in Google without any street address and a round pin. They are much more frequently shown in rural environments where there is less competition and fewer highly authoritative listings.
Florist Concierge by Wire - 20,175 listings
Flowers By Grower – 2,325 listings
Florist Telesales Directory - 5,502 listings
Flower Shops Directory- 3919 listings
This one is impressive
Florist Directory - 102,855 listings
This count likely has a large number of dupes and it may not be totally meaningful but as far as the eye could see they were all obviously the same company listed in the index.
Initially this sort of spam has the most impact in rural searches as the listings, without address do not have high authority and do not rank well in competitive areas. For example, this rural search turned up 7 of 10 of these listings in the Ten Pack. If these listings are allowed to be claimed via phone verification, it is conceivable, that like the locksmith spam, it could impact more urban and competitive searches.
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Rob Reynolds works for Pop-A-Lock, a large multi location locksmith chain. He coordinates their SEO and SEM activities particularly the Google maps/local business listing efforts and is also a central figure in Pop-A-Locks efforts at combating the scammer/spammer issue. Here is a recent comment that he offered up in reply to my recent posts on Locksmith abuses in Maps:
This is a highly emotional issue for locksmith all over but one thing is correct: this has nothing to do with the fact that most of the players are Israeli. The fact that illegal aliens are being recruited to work here in a multi state fraud is very relevant because it will eventually allow Rico statutes to apply once this gets to a federal case level. What particular nationality is irrelevant and only distracts/detracts from the valid arguments.
The fix for Google is actually quite simple as is the fix for the Yellow Page publishing industry. In a joint meeting with our CEO, our Attorney, a former FBI official, the Attorney for Aloa and several key figures in the locksmithing industry involved in the investigation of scammers, we came up with a simple set of ‘best practices’ that if followed would kill this phenomenon within a year.
1. Do not allow any new entries into the Google local directory, any IYP or in the Yellow Page categories of Locksmith or Keymaker without a valid DBA certificate issued by the state that the ad (listing) will present in.
2. Do not allow the address to be submitted unless proof of address is presented for the address requested.
3. If the state requested or city requested is one of the current 9 states that require a locksmith license or New York City, Long Island or Washington DC, then require that license number be submitted and presented in the ad.
In the case of Google there is a very simple step that they could do that they are already set up to handle: Require Post Card validation of any listing in the categories related to locksmithing. However, do not require that the address be posted in the ad itself.
In other words: suspend every listing with no address listed, if an address is listed send the post card and reactivate upon receipt of the pin number. Allow a new listing but force an address to be inputted (but allow it to be hidden except for the city and state see below why) but force the post card pin validation for any new listing.
Why allow people to hide the address: Most locksmiths are mobile only service (as evidenced by the www.aloa.org, www.thenationalocksmith.com polls and the www.clearstar.com polls of their members) and listing the home address causes safety concerns as well as misleading the public to thinking they can just drive over and have service performed.
Why force the City and state. This will limit the out of state companies from concealing their whereabouts. They can still post their numbers and ads in Google, however if they have no true local precense the ‘New York, New York’ city and state will be associated with the ad an minimize the black hat efforts.
I am available to discuss these issues either through our corporate office, through our attorney or if Google feels more comfortable they can directly contact the representative of TMP who can then in turn discuss the issue with us. Since I do represent a private company with a large stake in this issue, Google is welcome to contact the rep from Aloa who is representing not only their membership but the locksmith industry at large.
Tim McMullen JD is available at legislative@aloa.org
I am available at pop@lock.com
Thanks and thanks to the efforts of Map Guide Jen and Map Guide Adam for helping with this problem but the outstanding issues that we have with other companies having our Authorotative One Box result for local “Pop a lock + city name” still exist. Please see mapspam complaint on the water cooler site related to “Pop a lock oakland” searches.
