Tax day might have already come and gone, but that doesn’t mean ProPublica is done highlighting the questionable tactics of TurboTax’s parent company, Intuit. According to a new report, Intuit purposefully stopped Google from surfacing its free tax filing service in search results in an effort to steer all consumers — no matter their income — toward the company’s paid services. Intuit added code to the robots.txt file on its website that instructed Google to leave TurboTax Free File out of search results. The Free File service came about as part of an agreement between the IRS and tax software companies, including Intuit and H&R Block. The last thing these businesses want is for the IRS to create a free, government-run e-filing process, so to prevent that from happening, they’ve committed to providing a free tier of service. But clearly, they don’t want that route to have the same SEO as the filing services that are bringing in huge … [Read more...] about TurboTax intentionally hides its free tax filing service from Google search results
Remove ripoff report from google search results
Google removes government-banned sites from Russian search results, report says
Google has begun to tweak its search results in Russia to remove websites that've been blacklisted by the government's communications agency, according to a report Wednesday by Vedomosti, a local newspaper. Since 2017, the government has required search engines in the country to delete sites banned by the agency, called Roskomnadzor. Some of those search results include sites on child pornography, drugs and suicide, but some critics have also accused the agency of pushing state censorship, according to the Moscow Times. Google was fined $7,500 in November 2018 for not complying with the regulation, the newspaper said."We're committed to enabling access to information for the benefit of our users in Russia and around the world," a Google spokesman said in a statement. The company wouldn't comment specifically about the Russian news report. Google deleted about 70 percent of the blacklisted sites, Vedomosti reported. The Russian government has made 175 requests for the company to … [Read more...] about Google removes government-banned sites from Russian search results, report says
Google search results listings can be manipulated for propaganda
A feature of the Google search engine lets threat actors alter search results in a way that could be used to push political propaganda, oppressive views, or promote fake news.The feature is known as the "knowledge panel" and is a box that usually appears at the right side of the search results, usually highlighting the main search result for a very specific query.For example, searching for Barack Obama would bring a box showing information from Barack Obama's Wikipedia page, along with links to the former president's social media profiles.But Wietze Beukema, a member of PwC's Cyber Threat Detection & Response team, has discovered that you can hijack these knowledge panels and add them to any search query, sometimes in a way that pushes legitimate search results way down the page, highlighting an incorrect result and making it look legitimate.The way this can be done is by first searching for a legitimate item, and pressing the "share" icon that appears inside a knowledge panel.This … [Read more...] about Google search results listings can be manipulated for propaganda
Google search results are personalized even when incognito, study finds
It’s a well-known fact that Google has a heck of a lot of user data stockpiled in its servers, and it admits to using info like user location, browsing habits and search history to personalize some of its search results. However, a new study conducted by competitor DuckDuckGo has found that these targeted results are practically impossible to escape.As part of the study – entitled Measuring the Filter Bubble: How Google Is Influencing What You Click – 87 participants did a search for the political terms "gun control", "vaccines" and "immigration" only to find each individual had markedly different results despite the identical search terms.The study suggests that this "filter bubble" remains active for each individual user, even when using private browsing (Google’s Incognito window) or when logged out of a Google account.Read more: Google has made it easier to delete your search history and adjust privacy controlsNo such thing as online anonymityThe study was … [Read more...] about Google search results are personalized even when incognito, study finds
Russia launches civil case against Google over non-removal of search results
(Reuters) — Russia has launched a civil case against Google, accusing it of failing to comply with a legal requirement to remove certain entries from its search results, the country’s communications watchdog said on Monday. If found guilty, the U.S. internet giant could be fined up to 700,000 roubles ($10,450), the watchdog, Roscomnadzor, said. It said Google had not joined a state registry that lists banned websites that Moscow believes contain illegal information and was therefore in breach of the law. A final decision in the case will be made in December, the watchdog said. Google declined to comment. Over the past five years, Russia has introduced tougher internet laws that require search engines to delete some search results, messaging services to share encryption keys with security services, and social networks to store Russian users’ personal data on servers within the country. At the moment, the only tools Russia has to enforce its data rules are fines that … [Read more...] about Russia launches civil case against Google over non-removal of search results