Tom Vendetta, a student from New Jersey, USA, wrote a fake press release claiming he had just become the youngest employee of the world’s leading search engine, Google.
Vendetta published this release through the free service I-Newswire, signing it as Google spokesperson Sonya Johnson (a character Vendetta is believed to have imagined). The brief content stated: “Tom Vendetta, 15 years old, has officially joined Google. CEO Larry Page stated that this student will receive a relatively low starting salary, which will be deposited into a bank account for future educational purposes. Page confirmed that Vendetta would not be present at the company’s headquarters but would work from home in suburban New Jersey. His responsibility is to fix security vulnerabilities in the Gmail service. Google discovered Vendetta after accidentally visiting his blog and was impressed by his skills in JavaScript and AJAX.”
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Tom Vendetta’s fake news on Google News. |
Shortly after being published, this news became a tech story that spread widely, almost beyond belief. The prank temporarily made Vendetta famous, as his Gmail inbox received up to 400 emails within the first few hours.
What embarrassed Google was that their news aggregation system also reposted this story. Few would doubt the accuracy of an article related to the search engine when it appeared on Google News itself.
Vendetta’s actions inadvertently revealed that the Google News system did not verify press releases before publishing them. “I am very sorry and just hope that this vulnerability will be fixed so that no one else can do what I did and then regret it like I do now,” Vendetta wrote on his personal website.
Google engineers are focusing on upgrading their filtering system, checking, and balancing the flow of information to ensure the integrity of news on their platform. Nonetheless, Vendetta felt reassured when an employee from the search giant emailed him confirming that they would not ruin his dream of working for Google because of this incident.
