This is probably old news to some, but a 15 year old in New Jersey managed to get an online press release aggregator to publish a fake press release that the kid had written about being hired by Google. Ironically, Google News ended up linking to the fake article. According to a March 20th article by CNet, Google News has cut it’s ties with the I-Newswire.com.
The press release read:
“(I-Newswire) – 15 year old student, Tom Vendetta has been hired by search engine giant Google Inc. The student will receive a lowered salary, which will be placed into a bank account for future education, said Google CEO Larry Page. When asked what role Vendetta will play at the Tech Giant’s offices, Page said he wouldnt have a role at the Main Offices. Instead he would work from his home in the New Jersey suburbs. Vendetta will be incharge of working with recent security flaw’s in Google’s beta e-mail service, “Gmail”. Google said they first found out about him when they discovered the student’s blog, at http://tomvendetta.be. The media giant said they looked forward to working with Vendetta’s expertise in JavaScript and AJAX.
More on this can be read at:
- CNet News
- The SEO Blog
- Tom to the Vendetta, the blog of the kid who did this: “This is all going out of control and I am regretting every bit of it.”
- digg
- The Flack
- Blog News Channel
Post from one of my abandoned blogs – North Farnham Freeholder – recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine, March 2011
