Google Enlightens the Public on How It Fights Fraudsters and Scammers on Google Maps

Frauds and scams are a part of every social media activity and all Tech Giants make it their business to ensure that their application is as scam and fraud free as it can get. To ensure that they have to take several measures that the general public is not aware of. We know for example, that Google in order to keep its Google Maps scam free from fraudulent, blocks racist reviews and has limited the options to change site information to combat election-related misinformation on Google Maps, but this is not all.

Google Maps is used by millions of people every day. The app helps you to in finding your way around to listing down every local or fancy restaurant in your surrounding which you can dine at. It will tell you where the nearest flower or chocolate shop is in case you somehow managed to make your wife upset and need to make urgent emends and it can also tell you which place whether a restaurant or any place has a wheel chair accessibility or is disability friendly to visit. In short, it basically helps you solve a lot of things by just being in the palm of your hand. While Google never really shared how it tackled fraudulent activity on the Google Maps in detail, until this week, the company reached 970 million submissions very recently with 20 million using the application on a daily basis. This made the company realize that the public has a blinded faith in them about their whereabouts and search and in return the company provided details on how they tackle fraudulent activity on the app to make it a safe space for their users.

Google has an automated machine technology, which understands what normal for the app looks like and whenever it detects a movement or action that is out of the norm fed into its system, it immediately takes action on it. In case, something out of the ordinary is missed by the machine detectors, they always have human eyes keeping a thorough search on any kind of negative behavior. So almost every bad activity is immediately removed and blocked.

Google assured the public that they are not only taking down the bad content from the maps, but since they care about the user’s safety and privacy very much other measures are taken as well. In the past one year, Google has removed almost 5 million reviews that violated Google’s policy and blocked almost 3 million fake business profiles as well as closed down almost 30,000 business profiles that were reported. It also reviewed and then removed around 160 million photos and 3.5 million videos that violated the policy of the Google Apps or were considered of low quality according to the app preference.

Apart from this, Google shed some light on the positive aspect of the app and said the Google Maps community and its contributions have made the application come a long way. People update reviews and feedbacks on a certain place, ratings, address and business hours’ updates, reviews, images. The contributors can put forward whether or not a place is worth it, if it has elevators and if the place is suitable for disabled people with proper ramps for wheelchairs, which help others gather information through their feedbacks of a place. Google said almost 20 million submissions like these are made every day which also has helped the app bring about changes in their features to ensure a friendlier environment.


Sources: Google Blogs: 1 / 23.

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