New Jersey Teen Exploits Google News "Backdoor"

One of the beautiful things for small business owners about Google News is the fact that several free press release services are picked up by the news engine, giving small businesses with limited funds a way to get their news stories in front of readers. The downside of the system has been pointed out this week though, when a New Jersey teen exploited the system in order to play a practical joke on some friends. As with many practical jokes, things quickly snowballed out of control.

Wanting to impress his friends, 16 year old Tom Vendetta wrote and sent out a press release via i-Newswire that talked about how he'd been hired by Google and would be working on the Gmail project from his home. The story shows up when you search Google news for Tom Vendetta.

Unfortunately, the story got picked up on Digg, Vendetta's Gmail account got bombarded with mail and his MySpace profile was overloaded with new friend requests. Vendetta quickly fessed up on his blog and issued apologies to all involved.

While many will see this for what it was, a harmless prank that simply got a little out of hand, it does leave some with concern for what will happen to Google News down the road. As news of this spreads, the chances go up that more people will try to exploit the system in order to fill Google will spam press releases. At the same time, if Google "fixes" the problem by disallowing free press releases, small business owners will be the ones most likely to suffer.

Time will tell what happens, but it will be an interesting story to follow for a bit.

Found via Philipp Lenssen.