Google Maps has grown into an extremely useful app that does more than just help you navigate quickly, yet safely, from point “A” to point “B”. And once you get to point “B,” Google Maps will tell you where to dine, where to shop, where to find entertainment, and where to get a good night’s sleep. The app will also give you the phone number to call when you want to get in touch with a business like an airline.
Scammers send fake business numbers to Google Maps to scam users
According to a tweet from the UX designer
Shmuli Evers (via AndroidPolice), scammers appear to be replacing legitimate hotline numbers on Google Maps with their own phone numbers. As Evers reports, his flight with Delta Airlines was cancelled. When it became apparent that Delta’s customer service number was swamped, he looked up a hotline number on Google Maps. When the group answered on the other end, Evers began explaining that his flight had been canceled and he needed a new flight.
A fake phone number on Google Maps almost made Schmuli Evers the victim of a scam
The call was disconnected and then Evers’ phone rang; he was called from a French phone number and the caller ID showed the name of someone not related to Delta Airlines. The person then identified himself as an airline representative. Shmuli gave his name and the confirmation number of his new flight. He was then instructed by the “airline representative” to send the new flight confirmation number to another number via SMS. He was also asked to prepay for new flight bookings.
Worried he was the appetizer for a scam meal, Evers hung up the call only to be bombarded with a text asking him to pay five times the price of his original ticket to rebook. It turns out that the Google Maps phone number Evers originally called was linked to Delta’s local help desk at John F. Kennedy Airport. He also did some rubber work and found wrong numbers for American Airlines in Google Maps. Both numbers have since been corrected. Much of the information found in Google Maps is crowdsourced, such as business hours and hotline numbers.
What may have happened to Evers is that the information he allegedly sent to the “airline representative”, including the confirmation number for his “paid” replacement flight, was allegedly used by the scammer or one of his agents to collect the ticket at the airport where it may have been cashed, sold or used. Fake businesses are also popping up on Google Maps, including scam locksmiths. Scammers even call small businesses saying they’re from Google and will remove their Google Maps listing unless they pay to cover an “unpaid bill.”
A fake call from Verizon
Google could stop crowdsourcing information and let companies provide information for Maps, but because many companies don’t want to deal with providing Google with this data, Maps would lose the ability to provide information about many companies. So instead, Google continues to crowdsource data.
You could be confronted by a scammer at any time. As I was writing this article, my phone rang and the voice on the other end of the line claimed to belong to a Verizon representative. “How are you tonight?” the caller said. Realizing it was a recorded scam call, I replied that my evening wasn’t going well and that a safe had fallen on my head from a window above me. “Glad to hear that,” the voice said cheerfully. I ended the call.
Had I continued the call, I probably would have been asked for some personal information designed to hijack my Verizon account which would have been used to order expensive new iPhone models.
As Shmili Evers discovered, scammers are everywhere. Trust your instincts. If something seems strange and doesn’t make sense, you’ve probably been scammed.
