[HN Gopher] Google Maps Hacks (2020)
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Google Maps Hacks (2020)
Author : MrNosy
Score : 130 points
Date : 2022-03-22 13:05 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.simonweckert.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.simonweckert.com)
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| Google is an spyware company, which invades our privacy. It needs
| to be avoided at all cost. I always encourage people to use
| Amazon or MS products.
| catfishx wrote:
| I wonder if it would also work with virtualized Android devices
| with fake locations
| wisienkas wrote:
| I was about to mention the same thing. Why not spin up a
| serverfarm of virtual androids and spoof the GPS to slowly move
| through a specific street.
| shubhxms wrote:
| only one way to find out :)
| eugenekolo wrote:
| You'd have to figure out how to get Google GMS installed, and
| bypass their virtualization/emulator detection. Doable, but a
| bit more than just boot up some emulators.
| attilaperez wrote:
| Be right back, turning this into a SaaS for people who want to
| avoid traffic :)
| bambax wrote:
| It can be seen on the video that the guy with the cart is often
| passed by cars.
|
| From the point of view of Gmaps, surely if one phone can travel
| at 40mph+ through a street then it's not clogged, even if a whole
| pack of other phones seem to be stuck at a very low speed?
|
| (The one passing car would have to be connected to Gmaps as well,
| of course.)
| degenerate wrote:
| Have you ever been in a traffic jam and seen cars taking the
| shoulder to pass everyone and exit? Google would need to listen
| to the masses and ignore the few breaking the law.
| pasiaj wrote:
| San Francisco is often clogged, with motorcyclists lane
| splitting and therefore travelling at significantly higher
| speeds compared to others. I'm sure median speed gives a better
| approximation of actual thruput than top speed.
| bhartzer wrote:
| This post went viral back in 2020. I remember seeing it when he
| first did this using the wagon.
|
| This actually was inspiration for a new "service" that's out
| there now, which is not publicized that much (because of obvious
| reasons).
|
| There person running the service bought over 100 iPhones. They
| use Team Viewer to control all of them. The 100+ phones connect
| to 5 different hotspots, for internet access. They open up Google
| Maps on each phone and set the driving directions to a certain
| local business (the business paying for the service). Then, they
| literally drive to the business with all of the phones. This gets
| the business better Google Maps rankings, since it's "popular".
| Also, reviews are left using some of the accounts, as well as
| photos.
| MrNosy wrote:
| Oh really? Wow! Do you have a post you can share about that?
| Steltek wrote:
| How does Google Maps handle a bus or other transit? You could
| have 50 people, all starting and stopping every 100m, like it's
| bumper-to-bumper traffic. I suppose they don't all have Google
| Maps open but it could be reporting anyway. People don't need
| Navigation for the daily commute to work yet highways show up red
| just the same.
| kobalsky wrote:
| the phones in the pictures are in navigation mode. maybe they
| are weighted differently?
| thinkingemote wrote:
| They know where buses go usually, so if a point is going along
| a road that a bus isn't going on would be one idea. Another
| would be a flag identifying if a user has a car, and clustering
| of similar points together to identify a bus, also I imagine
| bus stops generate a pattern different subtle or obvious from
| normal traffic jam?
| Steltek wrote:
| But how is the article's wagon o' phones different from a
| bus? How does Google know if my 1 week old Google account has
| a car?
|
| I just had another thought. The Boston area has been rolling
| out bus lanes and they're pretty fantastic. However, a
| crowded rush hour bus may have a perverse effect on their
| traffic jam calculations. Where normal cars will be at a
| stand still, Google will also see ~50 users absolutely flying
| down the road in comparison. What happens then?
| clord wrote:
| I expect a road is considered blocked up if its throughput
| has _changed lower_ relative to normal. Normal bus traffic
| and normal car traffic don 't trigger the alert, but if a
| wagon of phones rolls through very slow, that will sway the
| algo.
| jqr- wrote:
| It's unlikely that 50 users on a bus all have Google Maps
| open at the same time.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Most people don't disable background tracking or bother
| closing an app when they're done with it, so while it's
| unlikely all 50 are, it's very possible many have had it
| open in the background for days (if not weeks).
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Well I don't know, but I'd have a guess as to how they
| might easily do it. Pattern recognition and/or machine
| learning. Something like: here is what the pattern of a
| user moving through space when they are in a car. Here are
| a million other ones. Here is a pattern of a user walking
| through space, taking a bus, etc etc. Now here is an
| unknown user. What pattern of movement does this user match
| closest to?
|
| A pattern would be, for example: is he ever seen moving
| more than 5mph? Does he use driving directions? Is he only
| seen moving faster along bus routes? If he is only seen
| along bus routes does his pattern of moving and stopping
| align with the bus stops? Is there usually traffic jams at
| the same time of the week on different days, etc.
|
| Just build up a database of patterns and check a 1 week old
| account with that to see what it fits best.
|
| Perhaps in an area with no predictable traffic and no bus
| routes, that a wagon of phone matches the pattern of a
| traffic jam caused by a blockage on a road. It's less
| likely to be a bus, perhaps?
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| >How does Google know if my one week old Google account has
| a car?
|
| I am being serious when I say this: they probably do. I get
| that comes off as "haha tongue in cheek we're all being
| spied on amirite!?" but I imagine google can and does
| figure that stuff out very, very quickly. Plus most people
| aren't just entering the google ecosystem for the first
| time with their new phone.
| tonymet wrote:
| i think this would be a great business. get real estate agents or
| HOAs to pay you to hack the maps to divert traffic away from
| neighborhoods
|
| we once lived in a quiet neighborhood in West LA . once wayze
| became popular, the traffic exploded and it was constantly noisy
| to the point i was wearing earplugs indoors all day.
|
| technology is efficient but not always beneficial
| [deleted]
| mobilio wrote:
| Written in 2020
| Jerrrry wrote:
| google can detect an Amish person in the horse-drawn carriage,
| reliably, by the small decrease in speed, and the slight "moving
| over" in the lane, by the deluge of barely-affected traffic.
|
| The red dot drudges along blissfully ignorant, unaware of its
| existence in the virtual, ethereal plane.
| paskozdilar wrote:
| Assuming enough people use Google Maps to navigate, this could be
| a good way to get yourself some clean roads. You'd basically be a
| virtual stampedo.
| robotcookies wrote:
| What's the point of this? It's not clever or useful and could
| cause people to waste time and gas getting re-routed. It's no
| different than spamming a forum or website.
| eckmLJE wrote:
| Around the time this fake traffic jam project was first
| performed, a friend of mine was working on a condo development
| that was just about ready to list for sale. They planned an open
| house. The property itself was very nice and successfully
| delivered. However, there was a problem.
|
| The property was very convenient to a local highway without being
| so close that it experienced noise/traffic/primary exposure to
| exhaust, etc. Google Maps would reliably take people on this
| highway and to the same exit. From that exit, locals would go one
| way that was a nice, quiet drive through some residential parts
| of town. But Maps would take you a different way, a detour down a
| side street with a public housing project that often presented an
| open air drug market, and was the site of not infrequent shooting
| deaths.
|
| Presumably Maps sent you that way because the other direct way
| was the way most people took, and so this detour had less traffic
| and was marginally faster. This street was some distance from the
| condo project, but it would still give people a certain
| impression of the neighborhood that the developer felt was
| unfair.
|
| I sent them the linked writeup hoping they would try it, but they
| never did as far as I know. Also, I'm not sure how well-received
| someone walking down this street with a bunch of phones in a
| wagon would be.
| mcast wrote:
| >Also, I'm not sure how well-received someone walking down this
| street with a bunch of phones in a wagon would be.
|
| Is there any way you could just have a single laptop running
| hundreds of Android simulators? You could just fake the
| location as well with some jitter.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| > Also, I'm not sure how well-received someone walking down
| this street with a bunch of phones in a wagon would be.
|
| Considering your story, the phones will certainly be well
| received ;)
| kbenson wrote:
| > walking down this street with a bunch of phones in a wagon
|
| They could always be thrown in the back of a car, and you can
| drive slowly down the street, possibly jumping from parked
| spots on the side if there's light traffic you would be
| interrupting if you stayed in the street and went too slow.
|
| I wonder if there's people that you can hire that are already
| set up to do this in large metro areas. It's crazy what you
| find people doing for side hustles when you look sometimes.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22216821
| MrNosy wrote:
| Oh that's really useful, thanks for sharing.
| samber wrote:
| What about buses?
|
| Did they identify traffic jam with the number of devices or the
| speed?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Google travel mode detection is pretty good about
| distinguishing between a car and a bus or train. I don't know
| if it comes from sensor data or radio data but Google reliably
| distinguishes between transit and car trips on my location
| history, whether I was carrying my iPhone or my Android. It
| also sometimes prompts me for "how crowded is/was the bus" when
| and only when I was riding a bus. This is an improvement over
| past behavior where Android would remind me where I parked ...
| the bus I rode earlier. I don't think current Google Maps will
| confuse a crowded bus and a traffic jam.
| ct0 wrote:
| I saw this happen in real life the other day on a recent trip to
| home depot. Saw someone walking down the road on my way into the
| store. On the way out I noticed gmaps reported a very quiet
| behind-the-store road as red, with heavy traffic, presumably the
| single person walking created the jam.
| AyyWS wrote:
| This happened when I was lost in St Louis. I pulled off the
| highway to a side street to check google maps, and maps
| reported red traffic at midnight in front of the empty parking
| lot of a closed business campus.
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(page generated 2022-03-22 23:02 UTC)