Fraudsters Abuse Google’s Copyright Takedowns to Target 117,000 URLs

For years, fraudsters have abused copyright takedown notices to dupe Google into removing websites from its search engine. But now the company is trying to fight back. 

On Monday, Google filed a lawsuit against two scammers based in Vietnam, who allegedly filed numerous false copyright takedowns with the company that targeted over 117,000 URLs. 

“These fraudulent claims resulted in removal of over 100,000 businesses’ websites, costing them millions of dollars and thousands of hours in lost employee time,” Google says in a blog post.

The alleged scammers, Nguyen Van Duc and Pham Van Thien, exploited a Google system that businesses and people can use to report copyright violations under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Google will then take down the URL hosting the…