Using Google Maps To Intercept FBI and Secret Service Calls 137
An anonymous reader sends in a story about a network engineer named Bryan Seely, who was tired of seeing fake listings and spam on Google Maps. He contacted the company and tried to convince them to fix their system, but didn't have much luck. Afterward, he thought of an effective demonstration. He put up fake listings for the FBI and the Secret Service with phone numbers that sent the calls to him. When people called, he forwarded them to the actual agencies while he listened in. After recording a couple of calls for proof, he went to a local Secret Service office to explain the problem:
"After that, Seely says, he got patted down, read his Miranda rights, and put in an interrogation room. Email correspondence with the Secret Service indicates that the special agent in charge called him a 'hero' for bringing this major security flaw to light. They let him go after a few hours. Seely says the fake federal listings, which were both ranked second every time I checked Google Maps, were up for four days. He took them down himself when the Secret Service asked."
Re:I see it as less about Google being bad... (Score:5, Informative)
True. One of the comments in TFA mentioned that this could be used for bank/credit card phishing. I thought that was an important insight to note. I think you'd get even more people blindly calling their bank based on a number on Google Local, and one could listen in and get all sorts of card numbers, social security numbers, secret passcodes, etc.