Hello, Andy from the DWG here. Apologies for writing in English; translate button as ever below.
We’ve received a complaint about a user https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/pedidos%20business adding locksmiths to the map such as https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/13619750514. The suggestion is that these don’t really exist and the idea is that someone desperate to contact a locksmith will contact what they think is a local business only to find themselves dealing with someone far away who will in fact simply try and sell their business on for a significant mark-up. The description of this practice in English is even described as a “locksmith scam”.
We’ve seen lots of these before in several countries. What makes this case different is that the street names added to OSM as the address do actually match nearby streets in OSM. The websites, where added, all look pretty much identical. The pictures, while different, do look like AI fakes. The businesses have also been added to Google, so Google can be used as a “proof” that the business exists with that name**. The telephone numbers are different (but banks of phone numbers are cheap). Website reviews are very recent and don’t look organic. In short, they all look to me like fakes, albeit better quality fakes than what we usually see.
Before I revert them all, however, if does make sense to ask if anyone can verify any of these on the ground? The user’s changesets are mostly on the east coast, with some in Madrid and Asturias. Can anyone find an actual office at an address listed in OSM for one of these? If there isn’t an actual office at the place that the object was added to OSM then they shouldn’t be in OSM because they are not verifiable.
** obviously Google can’t be used as a source for OSM for licence reasons - but this is what this user wrote in a changeset comment.
Edit: I did suggest that the adder of these post in this thread; they suggested that I might want to visit one of the locations myself(!).
