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 giant.
The I-Newswire service
offers free distribution of press releases to organisations and individuals.
Professional PR wire services charge a fee for news distribution. The
releases are used by investors and the press, and are indexed by Google News.
But blogger Richard
Wiggins found out that the I-Newswire system could easily be abused to send
irrelevant and incorrect statements.
"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 blogger
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.
Vendetta has since
apologised.
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