Eater of Souls made a custom map on Google for our trip. Since yesterday, it has acquired something like 1400 views. Obviously, these can't be actual views by real people, so they must be some kind of spiders or bots. Anyone know what they'd be doing?
Where does the number of views show up?
Google will I think allow other users to search maps people have made.
Not sure if that is the case here or not but maybe?...
Did you name your custom map, "Lindsey Lohan's XXX Rehab Tapes Exclusive!" ?
Quote from: Nigel on July 31, 2010, 10:41:40 PM
Eater of Souls made a custom map on Google for our trip. Since yesterday, it has acquired something like 1400 views. Obviously, these can't be actual views by real people, so they must be some kind of spiders or bots. Anyone know what they'd be doing?
Spying on you.
NSA hires a shitton of people.
When you create a new Google Map, it gives the option to keep it private, or to list it publicly. The public option is default.
But yeah, since people tend to put private information on there such as plans and dates and directions with your real address e.g. "From: 123 Fake Street, CA To: 321 Apple Street, NY".. I can totally see a criminal element profiting from perusing those public lists, either personally or via a bot.
Since maps generally add more data over time, you're likely being viewed by the same entity more than once.
The map is "unlisted".
We are both "persons of interest" so we were both paranoid for a minute, but I realized I had added it to "my maps" under another profile, and when I deleted it from that profile's maps, the page views decreased to those attributable to me & EoS. Whew.