Page 24 - ARUBA TODAY

A24 TECHNOLOGY
Monday 1 october 2018

Why you can't always trust your handy map app

By RYAN NAKASHIMA duced fraud "to a very low
AP Technology Writer incidence" and that "we're
For centuries, people have always working on new
relied on maps to figure out and better ways to fight this
where they are and where type of behavior."
they're going. But today's Sam Hind, a researcher at
digital maps — seemingly the University of Siegen in
more precise than ever — Germany who studies navi-
aren't always as depend- gation technology, said
able as they appear. mapping developers have
At the end of August, for come to realize that their
instance, Snapchat users users collectively have bet-
woke up early to find the ter up-to-date local knowl-
app's internal map had edge than their own teams
renamed New York City can collect.
with the anti-Semitic label "Of course, this comes with
"Jewtropolis." In Washing- a catch — that you can
ton, D.C., Google Maps rely on the veracity of the
incorrectly renamed a Sen- knowledge, and that you
ate office building after In this Monday, Sept. 10, 2018, image made from a video Greg Psitos works on a computer in the can somehow verify this,"
the late Sen. John McCain Queens borough of New York. he said.
a few days after his death That's an issue for business
on Aug. 25. Researchers All that is a bet that the wis- abusively renamed Lon- these massively outnumber listings on Google Maps.
have found numerous fake dom of the crowd eventu- don streets and dubbed the few bad apples," the The company makes it easy
business listings in Google ally ends up getting it right. Russia "Commieland." The foundation said. to add new business listings
Maps for plumbers and ho- But "eventually" can take changes were reverted in The king of digital cartogra- to its map, in part to entice
tels — apparent attempts a while, and in the mean- OpenStreetMap less than phy, Google Maps, doesn't small business owners into
to game search results and time, pesky humans can still two hours later by another rely on far-flung contribu- advertising with Google to
juice referral traffic. muck things up but good. contributor, other records tors to the same extent as attract nearby customers.
Digital maps are a modern Take, for instance, the show. OpenStreetMaps. But it can That opens the door to
uber-convenience, capa- morning of Aug. 30, when At Mapbox, however, the still suffer fraudulent edits. abuse. Just ask Greg Psi-
ble of pinpointing nearby users of Snapchat found anti-Semitic changes re- Much of Google Maps' tos, a 33-year-old florist in
landmarks, shops and res- New York City hatefully re- mained in a pipeline of data gathering, such as Queens, New York. In Feb-
taurants, highlighting traf- branded in the app's map. map edits where they lan- satellite images or traffic ruary, someone hijacked
fic jams and navigating In addition to the "Jewtrop- guished for 20 days until information, is automat- his Google Maps listing
you to destinations across olis" label, prominent city human reviewers cleared ed. But at the local level, and changed his hours to
the country. Google, Ap- landmarks bore ugly new a backlog. While Gunder- some listings rely on labels "closed" on Valentine's Day
ple and a variety of lesser- names such as "Pedophile son said that a Mapbox suggested by users them- — what should have been
known companies con- Bridge," ''Zionist Cannibal artificial-intelligence tool selves. Those are vulnera- one of his busiest days of
stantly update these real Drive," and "Adolph Hitler flagged the problem when ble to attack, and Google the year.
world representations using Memorial Tunnel." it showed up and quaran- has been fighting the prob- "Someone had controlled
a variety of sophisticated Snapchat and other apps tined the abusive changes, lem for many years. that listing for four years
tools, from satellites in orbit such as The Weather Chan- a reviewer then mistakenly On Aug. 29, someone sug- and I didn't know any bet-
to the phone in your hand. nel and Runkeeper rely on pushed through one of the gested the Russell Senate ter," Psitos said, adding that
But there's another impor- a company called Map- edits anyway, overwriting Office Building be renamed it took months to reclaim it.
tant input: crowdsourced box for their maps. Mapbox correct data. the "McCain Senate Of- Since then, he's been on
data submitted by ordi- CEO Eric Gundersen said The OpenStreetMap Foun- fice Building" on Google a crusade to draw atten-
nary people, which can the company uses more dation, a not-for-profit Maps, short-circuiting a tion to the problem. In one
make today's maps more than 130 sources of data. group based in Cam- change real senators had stunt, he fooled Google
like Wikipedia than Rand One of them is an open- bridge, England, said in a been contemplating at the Maps into believing his
McNally. When the naviga- source project similar to blog post that the changes time. The change got past flower shop is home to
tion app Waze flags a high- Wikipedia called Open- were reversed so quickly Google's automated and both news network CNN
way accident, for instance, StreetMap. that no one noticed them human screens, although and Trump Palace . Both
it's because drivers further There, a user made more until Mapbox served up the it was reverted after it drew of these listings were still
down the road have re- than 80 anti-Semitic label vandalized OpenStreet- press attention. (Renaming present and searchable on
ported it. Other unpaid vol- changes in a "tirade" across Map data to thousands of talk has since died down in Google Maps when this ar-
unteers submit information New York and other places apps and websites. the real world as well.) ticle was published.
on new business locations, in early August; records "The vast majority of editors Google said in a statement "I'm a florist," Psitos said.
landmarks and even new of those changes show want to come together to to The Associated Press "Now I'm a Google Maps
roads. the anonymous user also build something great, and that over the years it has re- savant."q