Unedited news site falls victim to hoax
Google News has stopped linking to a press release site after a teenager abused the service to spread a false press release about the search engine.
The I-Newswire service offers free distribution of press releases to both organisations and individuals. Professional services such PR Newswire or Businesswire charge a fee for news distribution. The releases are used by investors and the press, and are also indexed by Google News.
But the author of the Wigblog found out that the I-Newswire system could easily be abused to send irrelevant and incorrect statements.
"In any event, once word gets out on this, I can imagine lots of bloggers submitting "press releases" with their daily blog entries, enhancing their visibility by spamming Google News," the blogger noted.
This prompted 16-year old Tom Vendetta to send out a fake press release announcing that he was hired by Google to fix a security vulnerability in the Gmail service.
The spoof received wide attention in the blogosphere. Vendatta has since apologized.
Google News has stopped linking to a press release site after a teenager abused the service to spread a false press release about the search engine.
The I-Newswire service offers free distribution of press releases to both organisations and individuals. Professional services such PR Newswire or Businesswire charge a fee for news distribution. The releases are used by investors and the press, and are also indexed by Google News.
But the author of the Wigblog found out that the I-Newswire system could easily be abused to send irrelevant and incorrect statements.
"In any event, once word gets out on this, I can imagine lots of bloggers submitting "press releases" with their daily blog entries, enhancing their visibility by spamming Google News," the blogger noted.
This prompted 16-year old Tom Vendetta to send out a fake press release announcing that he was hired by Google to fix a security vulnerability in the Gmail service.
The spoof received wide attention in the blogosphere. Vendatta has since apologized.
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