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15-Year Old Googler Hoax  (View post)

Mike [PersonRank 0]

Monday, March 13, 2006
18 years ago

you have a small speling (sp – spelling) error yourself... :)

Corsin Camichel [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

He is soree: http://tomtothevendetta.blogspot.com/

Ludwik Trammer [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Wow, he got e-mail form Google – http://tomtothevendetta.blogspot.com/2006/03/life-without-google.html
Maybe they'll hire him? ;) I would do that...

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Yes Mike, the 2 errors I included in the word "spelling errors" were intentional :)

Brinke Guthrie [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

And I guess Schmidt would like to know he isn't CEO, huh.

Corsin Camichel [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Does that now start a lot of new "fake" Press releases??

Richard Wiggins [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

I am writing an article about how trivially easy it is to spam Google News. There appears to be no vetting of material submitted via certain Internet-based newswire agencies such as i-newswire.

I blogged this phenomenon recently. See:

How to spam Google News
http://wigblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/how-to-spam-google-news.html

I did test how easy this is. I submitted a press release that was not a hoax (not very newsworthy, but not a hoax). It appeared very quickly in Google News. It appears that the 15 year old hoakster read my blog entry via Digg.com and carried the test perhaps a tad too far.

But yes, I do expect more fake news releases as people become aware how easy it is. I also hope and expect that the Google News team will at the very least provide filters so that a searcher can opt out of unedited news wires.

mrbene [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Flipside is that this'll garner a bit more attention for those services that allow free news releases – which helps maintain a certain level of "little-guy" access to audience.

Tom Vendetta [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

Hahaha, yeah, I didnt put full effort into the spelling or the names, it was only to fool a few local friends. Not like i went to the site and said "YEAH, LET ME GO AND FAKE OUT THE WHOLE GOOGLE FAN COMMUNITY AND ALL OF DIGG AND EVERYONE ELSE ON THE INTANET!!!! WOOOO!!!"

Im sorry that you guys found it, and im glad you guys didnt belive it. Thanks for that post wiggins, your the guy who gave me the idea after reading your blog. I have been looking all over for that damned post -.-

JoAnne [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

"Now we all know press releases can lie, but I thought you had to at least pay to publish one."

Hunh? Why would someone need to pay to publish a press release?

Eyeroller [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

I like the way this entry cranks on the kid's spelling abilities, yet has its own <i>as part of the crank!</i> (Namely "contained a few speling error’s" should be "contained a few spe<b>ll</b>ing errors" – two Ls, no moron-revealing apostrophe.

Hey: if you're going to present yourself as a <i>news</i> source, let's have <i>some</i> professional standards when demanding that news sources have professional standards!

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Eyeroller, yes, my misspelling of "spelling error" was intentional. Which is not to say I'm speling erro'r free :)

ne0h [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

I'd be really curious to see if the 15 year olds IP address matched up with one of the pay services.

Its got to hurt Prweb's sales efforts when I-newswire is free.
http://www.prwebdirect.com/catalog.php

"Dropping a dime", oldest game in the book.

BR Natarajan [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

Just because one fool peed in the beach, you do not stop taking bath in the sea. Its sad that a mad youngster misused free press release and has discredited i-newswire. Google is playing big daddy and black listing i-newswire. If the youngster had written that he was hired by Doogle Corporation in Rajasthan as Security Expert would any one have bothered to verify? If the mad cap wrote that Rajesh Bachan died dancing to a holi song in Bollywood would anyone have bothered? Today society is mature enough to know what to believe what not to believe, whom to believe and whom not to believe, when to belive and when not to beieve, where to believe and where not to believe.
Let Google and the net community wake up to realities and not talk of non existent values in journalism etc.

Tadeusz Szewczyk [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Richard Wiggins – note that Google News does not accept unedited news services at all in the first place.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

I think with this approach it was bound to happen... in this way Tom Vendetta was only the "messenger"... a symptom, not the cause of this mess :)

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