Google says working hard to fight against fraud, fake business profiles on Maps

New Delhi: Search Engine giant Google has said that it was working hard to fight against fraud and fake business profiles on Maps

"Over the years, we've added more than 200 million places to Google Maps and every month we connect people to businesses more than nine billion times, including more than one billion phone calls and three billion requests for directions," Ethan Russell, Product Director, Google Maps, said in a blog post.

“But occasionally, business scammers take advantage of local listings to make a profit. They do things like charge business owners for services that are actually free, defraud customers by posing as real businesses, and impersonate real businesses to secure leads and then sell them,” he added.

To tackle the frauds, Google said that it has taken down more than 3 million fake business profiles––and more than 90 percent of those business profiles were removed before a user could even see the profile.

It added that more than 250,000 of the fake business profiles of the removed items were reported to the company by users. Google said that it has disabled more than 150,000 user accounts that were found to be abusive – a 50 percent increase from 2017.