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Ask HN: Can you help me remove the marks for the airstrikes from Google Maps?
248 points by wzyoi on March 2, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 147 comments
My hometown, which I left on the 14th, so far has been safe.

But it's about to change. Today I stumbled upon information about supposed marks for the airstrikes on Google Maps.

I tried cheking information myself and found it very believable. Replicate as follows:

1. Search for Dnipro on Google Maps

2. Enter фермерське господарство (means farm on Ukrainian, but there are no farms there) in search

3. Do not press enter and look for auto-complete: Those are supposed targets.

Those marks are unusual: you can’t even report them. I never seen anything like this.

Video demonstration here:

https://youtu.be/OHGsFCfuB_k

This may save lives, including people I know. That’s why I need your help.

Important Edit: I have to clarify that in my opinion these are more probably marks for saboteurs to make real-world marks on the specified locations.

Examples here: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/russia-invades-ukraine-secret-symbols-seen-in-ukraine-point-to-escalation-of-violence/ZRZPD5W7WRAWD3U32C4PHB273I/



I don’t know if this is true. But to everyone dismissing the idea that a military would ever use Google Maps to co-ordinate, you may have missed some news stories about what a shitshow the first few days of the Russian invasion has been. Major breakdown of their digital systems and lots of improvisation.


> what a shitshow the first few days of the Russian invasion has been. Major breakdown of their digital systems and lots of improvisation.

can we corroborate this with chinese and/or non-western media? it’s hard for me to believe anything at all during a war.


Western media this time is pretty much on point. It doesn't mean that the media has become better. It is just that their standard narrative of bad Russia has this time really matched and even got exceeded by the reality as Russia is actually waging criminally atrocious and completely unprovoked and unjustified war while the Ukrainians are really fighting it tooth and nail. The Ukrainians' current most important victory is the failure of the Russian Blitzkrieg. While Russians are pressing and bringing a lot of hardware it is very clear that they don't get even one tenth of the expected bang for the buck while Ukrainians' resistance is growing.

For people with Ukrainian and/or Russian language the raw sources like Telegram work nice. I initially used the sources very actively to cross-reference Ukrainian TV, and it was checking fine for me, so i mostly settled on the Ukrainian TV. Russian TV is even not in the ballpark of the truth, it is even not on the same planet.


> Western media this time is pretty much on point.

how do you know this?

> so i mostly settled on the Ukrainian TV

these the same guys that said the ghost of kiev is a real thing (it’s not)? or that the soldiers of snake island died (they didn’t)?


Ukrainian state media did publish that Snake island defenders may be alive soon after Russian claims.

I think it is fair to hold media to high standards, but shouldn't we cut them just a little slack if their country is literally being invaded right now?

For the record, I personally know I can trust that last part because I have friends and relatives living in the east of Ukraine (none of whom are particularly politically biased either way, they have kids and want the attacks to end). I cannot report any wild rampage and killing of innocent civilians, but I can definitely confirm the invasion, the soldiers and military equipment, the inability to leave the city, blown up bridges and train tracks, people hiding in basements for days, explosions, etc.


They never said they died. I remember reading something on the line of "we had no communications since and assume they are probably dead".


I never claimed Ukrainian media said they died.

After your comment I checked Wikipedia sources and it turns out they did report something along those lines[0]. But again, cut them some slack.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20220225021042/https://www.pravd...


this is why you do cross-check, and need to understand the limits on the precision of realtime war info. A lot of info has significant fuzziness and consumption of it is an active process. For the snake island there was information that communication got lost at some point during the battle, and they stated that most probably all the guys died. It wasn't intentional disinformation, and that is the key difference from Russian TV. For the ghost of Kiev - the planes got shot down, while who shot down - was it the same guy or not - is very hard to find out until military gives you that, and i wouldn't hold it against the TV people who built this legend without waiting for full confirmation or denial - again you need to understand there they can get carried away and why.

For contrast, to illustrate what disinformation is - Russian TV continue to claim non-attacking of civilians while you can easily find huge number of videos (which you can easily cross-check/geolocate/etc.) of civilian targets being attacked.


> i wouldn't hold it against the TV people who built this legend without waiting for full confirmation or denial - again you need to understand there they can get carried away and why.

I think it’s entirely reasonable to hold journalists to some standards that include “not making shit up and then reporting on it”.

I can be (and am) simultaneously sympathetic to their side but not to their journalistic actions in this case.


Sorry if this sound sharp, but let's discuss this after you spend some quality time performing journalistic or editorial duties while your country is being invaded in real time.


have some empathy, man. Imagine you're being bombed and then a Mig-29 of your AirForce comes and shoots down the attackers. And then bombing terror starts again and the Mig-29 comes and saves you again, and then the bombing terror starts again ... In such situation most people wouldn't be able to preserve any coherency to their thoughts and words at all, while those journalists still lead those war information TV marathons for hours.


it's a fact that Russia uses COTS equipment for comms. Nothing to corroborate when this info is all over and from different independent sources.

edit: toned down the rantiness & add sources:

https://twitter.com/mil_in_ua/status/1497961913292001283

https://twitter.com/sbreakintl/status/1498619303717142529


thanks for toning it down and the sources


I'm extremely sceptical too - but it's pretty much well known by now that they intended to do a 'special operation' - lasting 2-3 days and hoping for Ukraine to surrender. Didn't really happened that way.

Also, Chinese media don't show any images of war as far as I know (just reading Global Times from time to time to have an opinion from 'the other side')


Chinese? For real? Why the fuck would they be impartial?


who said anything about impartial?


Its a rather simple situation, they would never publish this if true, and wouldn't publish this if false. Period. Nothing to "ask for sources about". Simply choose which you belief or don't make a choice.

But please don't suggest lack of Chinese sources is a relevant data point.


The point is to have both sides of the story, I for one have been tu ing in to Russia Today knowing is their propaganda but its damn interesting.


There are no impartial media.


This is a cheap argument because it builds on a false premise. Because there are also no impartial humans. It makes it sound like the onus is 100% on the media to always proof it's correctness which is a fallacy. You need several things

1) best intention from the media to be unbiased

2) minimum level of intelligence to spot bias and question the motivation by the reader

3) trust from the reader in the media that they're not willfully misled

4) trust from the media to the reader that they put things into the correct context within their own belief system

even one has (hypothetically) all of those, the audience will still be bitten by not sharing the same historic data and personal experience to put things into identical context as was available to when the info was produced. then there is the time-lag from when it gets written/published/read that distorts.


China is a close ally of Russia and does not have much media freedom.

I do not know why you think it would be worth listening to anything they claim.


South China Morning Post has its biases but it's good reading. Recent articles on the war and Chinese opinion:

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3168998/ho...

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3169021/china-told-u...


thank you, i used to read SCMP in the past, forgot about it.


african media then? or maybe middle east?


What exactly are you looking for? Your comments make it sound as if you are shopping for a different truth.

Japan's media doesn't seem to have a very different perspective:

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/

South Africa; similar stories and conclusions as most of the world:

https://www.netwerk24.com/beeld/aktueel

This Lebanese newspaper has an interesting take on how the Western media coverage is using double standards (perhaps a valid point), but nowhere do they dispute the current event:

https://lebanonews.net/En/2022/02/27/double-standards-wester...

Taiwan then?

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2022/03/02/2...


yes, shopping for confirmation from non-western media.

thanks for the links.


The rest of the world is using twitter & tiktok to get real time intelligence so why not. One could, for example, tell those sympathetic to you to use "hastag military installation blow it up" and tag it on social media and within a few hours the circling bomber get the coordinates and boom.


Same, I don't know if it's true that they are marks for Russian air strikes. But I've just tried and it does look weird (farms in the middle of the city).


It would be very suprising if those are marks for air raids. Most likely it is a troll doing it (proper troll, for "fun"). Or official psyops ofcourse to mess with peoples heads.

Spotters might very well use Google map to get coordinates but to communicate that via Google Maps itself would be strange. I don't see how fire control would not want to know what they are marking for prioritisation.


beside the large painted marks on the roofs/etc., on Ukranian TV 10 minutes ago they shown some marks which are kind of plastic stick-on 1 inch square with the same cross-in-circle image. The stick-on are reflective and have numbers. Some people think it is a mark of the houses with police, military residents, etc...


Do you mean survey markers/targets? Theyre used in civil construction etc to track changes relative to an established datum https://www.berntsen.com/Surveying/Smart-Targets-Datums-Refl...


looks like it. There had some time ago been warning that some civil markers may be mistaken for suspicious one, and looks like that is what happening in this case. Sent them email about these ones.


Those plastic reflective stickers are supposedly local tools for land measurement.


While I don't have more information and sources apart from an insta story from a smart girl from Dnipro, I don't see the appearance of 10 closed farms in the industrial city beliavable.

I requested more info, but she is likely sleeping.


Check my other, more detailed comment - farm's address is rarely in a place where farm is actually located. Farm land is just an asset of a company, which is registered elsewhere. If this is a small, family owned business, it makes sense that they register it in their home (to simplify paperwork), while their farm land is somewhere outside of town.

Checking the points I get on gmaps (following your instructions) and then googling these farms, they seem to be real businesses, and the address matches what gmaps give me. First point I get can be checked on [1].

[1] https://youcontrol-com-ua.translate.goog/catalog/company_det...


Today I ran across a tweet from before the war about corruption in Russian comms procurement: https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1184964805565792257

Arsalov arrested: https://warsawinstitute.org/deputy-chief-russias-general-sta...

It seems likely that corruption has left them with a non-working system. It happens often enough even in Western procurement.


The BBC got access to a lost tablet used by some Wagner group mercenaries in Libya and the map they use doesn't seem to be Google maps : https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/8iaz6xit26/the-lost-tablet-...


https://twitter.com/sbreakintl/status/1498619303717142529

apparently some of Russian forces are using unencrypted civilian analog radio


Since SE079 (cellphone) is was very common in swiss army when I was in service, I would not be surpriced, if they don't use google services and so on today too.


C.f. the US military removing the degradation of the civilian GPS during the first gulf war due to a lack of military receivers.


Actually, I have been trying to find some good in-depth sources. If you can share, I'd be much obliged.


Here why they are using civilian walkie talkies:

https://twitter.com/sbreakintl/status/1498619303717142529?t=...


If those comms are cleartext, that also means its possible to start sending disinformation.

Start talking about hold-ups at cross-roads that are clear. Tell them about shortcuts that actually lead through marshes. Tell them "the attack we discussed earlier will actually happen 43 minutes earlier". Tell them, "hey we have run out of food here". Tell them, I heard that 10 miles back they are serving hot food, damn I wish I was there.

Just fuck with their comms, making them either make wrong decisions, demoralize them, or make them abandon these comms for something even worse.


Well, the word was already out before I posted this ofc.

But I would have hoped that this was kept a secret and that I didn't knew about this.


> If those comms are cleartext, that also means its possible to start sending disinformation.

This is a classic confusion of authentication and encryption. We can hear what they're saying (which is useful), but that doesn't mean we can pretend to be them.


The comms have neither authentication nor encryption. So at least on a technology level it is very possible to transmit.

I doubt they have robust enough authentication to determine whether you really are supposed to be speaking. Likely they won't believe you, but they will also start doubting, in general, messages sent over the channel. That means being less sure the actual authentic messages are to be believed.

It's more about disrupting their faith in the comm system, rather than about having them believe your falsehoods.


I’ve put some thoughts in edit on this. What do you think?


You're probably right about undercover saboteurs; they don't want to be caught with military/unusual equipment, so the use of normal phones/tablets and related apps makes sense. In doubt, the harm done by deleting those and similar marks if they're innocuous is nothing compared to the benefits if they're really made by saboteurs. Better they remove them ASAP and keep the attention for other that might surface. I'd also alert other maps service providers. If Ukraine still has enough control over the cellular network data, and Google degraded connections to their maps service in the area to plain http (so no port 443), deep packet inspection from the Ukrainian govt could reveal if someone is adding marks and near which tower.


> In doubt, the harm done by deleting those and similar marks if they're innocuous is nothing compared to the benefits if they're really made by saboteurs.

You waste energy and time.

There is an insane amount of paranoia in Ukraine (for good reasons ...) and it would not suprise me if the blue-on-blue events are a bigger problem than civilian sabouteurs themselves.


> “Out of an abundance of caution, we are removing user contributions like photos, videos, reviews and business information and all user-submitted places from Google Maps in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus since the invasion began, and are temporarily blocking new edits from being made,” a Google spokesperson said.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/sarahemerson/russia-goo...


Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to restrict this activity geographically rather than based on accounts’ language?


What would be the geographic restrictions though?

“In ukraine”? Russian troops might be located there, also VPNs, and non-GPS geolocation is not exactly reliable (at least in my european experience where I’m essentially never geolocalised correctly and the subsequent localisation is always incorrect, any location within a few hundred miles of a border is a crapshoot).

“Out of ukraine or russia” would be trivially bypassed via a vpn as well.


No you misunderstand -- disable contributions where the contribution itself is located anywhere on the map in Ukraine. No VPN concerns there...


Use code "Invasion2022" to get 50% off a 1 year subscription to our award winning VPN.


It still works, I've just tried.


On Google Maps Web on Linux Firefox, when I search for фермерське господарство, I get autocomplete results. Clicking on one fills the search bar and drops a pin on the map. The search bar remains filled, but the pin disappears a second later, and the left sidebar shows a generic description rather than the label. It seems like these pins are only half-present on the Google Maps servers.


Apparently these are false alarms: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30528022

> OP, why do you think a farm business (which gmaps are showing the location of) should be in the same place where farm land is? These simply seem to be the addresses where a "farm business" is registered, as can be confirmed on a company-info-aggregator site [1]... To answer your point about why these seem different (e.g. you cannot report them), I think it's because they are automatically scraped by google from the official company-info sites in each country. Seems to be a similar situation in other countries, as far as I can tell. [1] this is the info of the first item on gmaps I get - address matches the location I'm shown https://youcontrol.com.ua/catalog/company_details/21897611/

> P.S. Those marks still look weird nevertheless. Not reportable or edible. The only article they link to is useless. Maybe it's worth fixing.


k8s takes some time to roll out on a global scale i would assume


If it's an update to the Docker images, that normally takes a couple minutes, if it's a rolling deploy. It is possible to turn off the rolling deploy, but there will be downtime.


Google uses neither k8s nor Docker internally. From my knowledge, a change like this can take anywhere from a couple of minutes to a few hours to roll globally, depending on how much support was already in place.


>>If it's an update to the Docker images

>Google uses neither k8s nor Docker internally.

It's so weird when people just go on the internet and lie about how things work with such utter confidence. No 'I believe', no 'if things are still done that way' just pure lies typed as fact.

Should be an account ban, really.

(Them, not you.)


What did I say that's incorrect? When I said "If it's an update to the Docker images", I was speaking hypothetically.


>I was speaking hypothetically.

There are well established grammatical constructions that indicate hypothetical speaking and you didn't use any of them.


How nice of them to take this opportunity to remove all the anti-war propaganda added to Google maps in Russia.


My mom mentioned this. They may be bypassing the ban.


Other commenters in other threads say that these marks are placed by civilians working on behalf of the Russian government. It makes some sense. No software is needed, and traffic analysis looking for spies is unlikely to flag https requests to google maps. Also, Russian owned map services are supposedly blocked in Ukraine. Some people claim to have worked with Russia in this way for anti-isis strikes in syria.

At the very least, they are defacement, and google should pull them. Hopefully someone from their maps abuse team will take a look. HN search of articles in the last 24 hours should find the comments I’m referring to.


Google employee here, though not on the maps team, I just raised it internally to look into (please continue to try to make edits, I don't know when it will be seen)


https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30528022


Thanks for the follow up


I think decision makers from the Ukrainian military should get into touch with Google before anything is done, since there is a distinct possibility that removing these markers is a bad idea. Even if they are used for real targeting, they can also be used to warn civilians and the respective installations of upcoming strikes or sabotage actions. Besides, if they really need the marks, they will not stop shooting when they disappear, they will instead more likely shell indiscriminately to show their superiors they're fulfilling their objectives.

I don't know if these considerations are relevant but would urge OP to contact someone in Ukraine about it.


It feels very improbable that a government would be using google maps for this. It feels even more improbable that even if they are, removing a mark from google maps would prevent them from launching an actual air strike. Surely a target important enough to "mark" would be worth finding an alternative way to target in case a bunch of keyboard warriors figure out your nefarious plan.

None of this makes sense.

I know it feels good to feel like you're helping but I think you're being trolled by assholes on the internet.


The invasion was so urgently cobbled together that many Russian forces were using amateur radios to communicate, they had no support infrastructure in place, or even fuel for the vehicles containing that infrastructure. Numerous soldiers were captured carrying off the shelf radios (literally think eBay), and there are various reports they rely on the mobile phone network to coordinate with central command. There was allegedly also a recent misappropriation scandal where cheap Chinese communications gear was purchased and relabelled before being sold to the Russian military, suggesting they might not even have real equipment to give to their troops.

Separately, having coordination done via "www.google.com" DNS & SSL ClientHello makes it all but impossible to block without disconnecting the Internet for the entire country, at a time when access to information within the country is more essential than ever.

Everything about this sadly makes sense


> Everything about this sadly makes sense

Especially Google not keeping their word. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30524898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30525030


HTTPS everywhere very much cuts both ways. We love improvements like encrypted SNI because we think it only means the evil dictator's middlebox won't function any more, when in reality it also enables shit like this.

On the whole though, I think HTTPS everywhere was still a net improvement, and we should probably be thanking Google for pushing it.


Fair enough, I don't know what the situation is, or even if that promise to BuzzFeed is accurate.


As far as I understand the Russian equipment is awful and unmaintained. As a result soldiers in the field just use cell phones and Google Maps to coordinate. Yes they have the original military equipment as the source of the commands but it's much easier to communicate via cell phones.

If you know Russians this makes 100% perfect sense...

The solution isn't to remove it. Just move the locations slightly to an empty field nearby.


Given the accuracy of the Russian artillery and rockets seen so far, "move it slightly" is a no-op.


Slightly is subjective. It can be 10 miles or more. But if you remove it they will notice...

I worked for a company that worked with maps and our local authorities came over and asked us to move the locations of the bases just a bit. We did that. The logic is that they already know the base is there. Just move it a bit and if it looks close enough they will get small things wrong. If it's too much they won't make the mistake of relying on the bad information.


I read something about a 40 mile long logistics convoy.... might be more interesting to put markers on that road than on an empty field.


It feels very improbable that a government would be using google maps for this.

Does it? My 'knowledge' of war comes from movies, TV and video games, which is obviously nonsense. I know that. I know that my belief that military tech is a bit like the things you see in Call of Duty or a Marvel blockbuster is wrong, and that it's all special effects and creative license to make things look 'cool'. Learning that soldiers on the ground in an active warzone pull out a phone and use Google Maps wouldn't actually surprise me at all. They're cheap, reliable, and understood by everyone. The only reason I can think of not to use it is because Google can be forced to block your access. Maybe they don't care about that?


It's army that was told they are doing exercises and then sent to invade Ukraine instead. Regular soldiers and low-level officers weren't expecting this. They lack modern digital communication and use open analog channels for talking. Many of them were abandoning armored vehicles cause they ran out of fuel in the middle of nowhere and the logistic failed.

There's a lot of weird stuff happening, I find this plausible enough.


Yesterday someone who had been right about other things told me on Twitter that Russia has been running their communication in cleartext at least until recently.

I don't listen in to Ukrainian radio so I cannot verify but I am sure someone here knows more if they want to tell. It seems at this point it is already a very open secret.


until recently?

they suddenly found 100,000+ digital radios?


There's been an increase in coded messages, e.g. "1st I'm 28th, 118 0130 63115 50 2183 50 2937"


There was a youtube channel with Ukrainian’s forces movement. I wish I could easily find it but don’t believe it’s still up.

It looked Something like this:

“MORNING IN KHARKIV 25/02”

Footage of armed vehicles moving on the city streets

1.2 million views


It has been noted by number of analysts that it is surprising that Ukraine still has access to Internet. Everybody expected cyber warfare to be a major part of the invasion. One of the possible explanations mentioned: Russian army and its covert operatives need it.


Ukraine has one of the best fiber optic and cable network systems in the world built 10-15 years ago. It had mobile internet in subway station and between subway stations in 2002-2004, way before anyone in the world.


Is the internet and electricity being on not possibly because the invaders don't have air superiority?


Also packet switched networking was invented to tolerate enemy bombing.


Makes sense, but source?


You're being downvoted for a fair question. I wouldn't exactly cite this as a source to the GP's claim but it does still answer your question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_switching#History


I guess I may have come across as rude or lazy for not googling it myself :) Thanks!


In times of uncertainty I always count on worst.

If chances of this true are 10% and this is indeed true, giving it some attention is worth it.

Edit: by attention I mean somebody from Google who can check things up


Agreed. Even a 0.1% chance makes a Google (or DoD) follow-up worth it.


I don’t think google maps info was ever close to 100% reliable anywhere. Once in midtown Toronto there was a giant hole where google maps said a bank was, they where building a condo there. I thought I’d be helpful and submit a correction to the map — I later got a notification my correction was not accepted and they kept the ghost bank there years after it was gone.

There’s also no way they could reasonably think I was a spammer because I had a decades old google account that existed within months of gmail existing. They probably know what I’ve eaten every day for the past 20 years.

That’s all to say, google is a giant machine, and if it decides your version of reality is wrong, don’t bother, no human on their side will probably ever look at it because humans are expensive.


Yesterday’s discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30516996


OP, why do you think a farm business (which gmaps are showing the location of) should be in the same place where farm land is?

These simply seem to be the addresses where a "farm business" is registered, as can be confirmed on a company-info-aggregator site [1]. I assume, in a lot of cases (especially for family owned farms), these are actually homes of the owners, to simplify all the mail and other paperwork. Actual farms can be located anywhere, probably outside of town. It might even be multiple farms (multiple pieces of land).

To answer your point about why these seem different (e.g. you cannot report them), I think it's because they are automatically scraped by google from the official company-info sites in each country. Seems to be a similar situation in other countries, as far as I can tell.

[1] this is the info of the first item on gmaps I get - address matches the location I'm shown https://youcontrol.com.ua/catalog/company_details/21897611/


https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30528022

thank you


Targeting airstrikes theory aside, wonder what Google thinks of the potential that Russian soldiers are using Maps to navigate while invading Ukraine?


I'm the exact opposite of a military expert, but the conflict being extremely asymmetric, a service like Google Maps helps the Ukranians side more than it helps the Russians.


Does it though? Maps in general help me more when I'm new somewhere. I wonder if it couldn't be helpful for Google Maps and other services to block out for example all small roads, inner cities, etc. Maybe I'm wrong though; why would maps help the defenders more?


It would be nice if Google Maps would distract the invading soldiers by asking them to calibrate their accelerometers all the time like it did on my phone.


It should not be too challenging to block services to phones originating in Russia but being used in Ukraine now.


Indeed. Cell phones are by definition location tracking devices so data can be routed to the right place. Ukrainian mobile network operators should be able to figure out the exact movement of every single soldier carrying a regular phone, and selectively block service at opportune moments. More trivially, wouldn't they be using russian SIM cards?


How about adding reviews to those places that tell the truth about the whole situation? Looks like it could get to the right people.


Does anyone know why google maps is used here? Could it be trolling? To make people busy doing useless work?


If the tweet[0] tells the truth, it might be the case, that Russian military does not have any other choice.

[0] https://twitter.com/sbreakintl/status/1498619303717142529?s=...


tldr: false alarm, unclear google

I'm back to process info and make edits.

I couldn't stay online due to injured hands from gadgets overuse.

> OP, why do you think a farm business (which gmaps are showing the location of) should be in the same place where farm land is? These simply seem to be the addresses where a "farm business" is registered, as can be confirmed on a company-info-aggregator site [1]. I assume, in a lot of cases (especially for family owned farms), these are actually homes of the owners, to simplify all the mail and other paperwork. Actual farms can be located anywhere, probably outside of town. It might even be multiple farms (multiple pieces of land). To answer your point about why these seem different (e.g. you cannot report them), I think it's because they are automatically scraped by google from the official company-info sites in each country. Seems to be a similar situation in other countries, as far as I can tell. [1] this is the info of the first item on gmaps I get - address matches the location I'm shown https://youcontrol.com.ua/catalog/company_details/21897611/

curl-up was right - these are all addresses of legally registered farms and they are Googlable.

I did not think about googling the names or how farms are registered or why Google has such weird marks.

I thought they are similar because it's the way to find them and not because they are from one trusted source.

Also, all marks I've seen were close to Russian troops. But the only border of Dnipro that's completely safe is west.

Google parses open data. I was not aware of that.

Thanks for the help and sorry for the wasted resources.

P.S. Those marks still look weird nevertheless. Not reportable or edible. The only article they link to is useless. Maybe it's worth fixing.

I'm out of resources (hands) to continue typing. Thank you all <3


Very happy to have been able to help, and thanks for broadcasting my post :) Your theory actually sounded very plausible to me, which is why it peaked my interest so much. I hope we're able to "crowdsource" and inspect future similar cases as well. I wish best of luck in these difficult times.


Too bad I can't edit the post anymore because it got unlisted.

I think it's too hard to notice parent comment.

Maybe mods could pin it?

@dang


If it’s real intel, forward it. Let them think it’s secret.


Why would Russia mark airstrikes with some kind of obfuscated Google Maps entries? I hope your hometown stays safe, but I can't see how this makes sense.


Any agent/soldier can access it without a complicated permission or authorization structure. You don't need access to some spy satellite. All you need is a mobile phone, tablet or laptop. It would seem very effective to me.


Not to mention the entire logistics side seem to have broken down entirely so coms and digital services being out / unavailable would be… unsurprising.


These marks could be set by ukrainian citizens wanting to return the glorious days of Soviet Union.


Its easy for local collaborators/spies to use this kind of system for communication with the Russian army.

No special skills or tools needed, and the on-line behavior is really hard to distinguish from 'expected' behavior. Its a pretty nice, and really easy to use, covert channel.


$cheap


There is a saying in Russia, at war all measures and ways are good (на войне все средства хороши). Whatever can be used will be used either due to convenience, due to malice, or due to any other reason.


If this is really a thing why would google not probably know about it first and second why would google not just hide everything but roads views for a temporary period. No sat views, no places, nothing but roads. If you want to be fancy maybe roads and gas stations and food.

It seems like out of an abundance of caution you would not want your service to be used for this. Same for bing and other maps.

Am I missing something here?


I was trying to check if this is happening also on OpenStreetMap, I searched for "фермерське господарство" which returned results in Ukraine, but I wasn't able to restrict them to a single city so I don't know if those are actual farms or not. Somebody who knows OpenStreetMap better could check this?


The OSM data model is pretty free form, checking for things marked in one particular way wouldn't really rule out the system being used for coordination.


Overpass Turbo [1] is the search for OSM data. One can search for partial key-value combinations. When searching for `name:фермерське` around Kyiv, I only find one instance: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1gBr

Generalising the search for `*=фермерське` does not yield much more (around Kyiv, for example): https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1gBA

You can pan and zoom the map and repeat the search with the 'Run' button on the top left, but I often get a time-out when searching for regions spanning more than ~50 km.

[1]: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Overpass_turbo


Try [landuse~"farm"] (which will match several different types).


Sure, I specifically only included the Ukrainian name.


We could run Ads: Tired of Starting a War on your Brother-nation? Apply for political Asylum in Europe now!


From what I've heard from some russians, there are already such ads wherever possible.


If true, what would the debate within Google be like about closing Google services / blacklisting accounts or devices, over the affected regions?

For such a thing they probably have to get approval from the state department or someone else correct?


>For such a thing they probably have to get approval from the state department

Google doesn't have to get approval from the state department to discontinue services.


True, but they have strong ties to the state department, and I imagine those conversations are happening. The right strategy might be non-obvious from the outside.


No I mean don't think they would, in a regular case...But for such a thing, where say it affects a target/person of interest/VIP who is under surveillance/protection, or, say in this case, where it's an action in and that directly affects a war-zone, I imagine there be such a requirement...

I mean, if anything, you can imagine the situation where say CIA was doing some operation in a country, and at the same time there was some sort of mass disinformation campaign by some "enemy" actor, and Google decided to discontinue services, but that interfered with the CIA's operation somehow, maybe by cutting CIA off from intelligence and capability against the actor. So you imagine that it would be desirable there would be some co-ordination of things, to avoid stepping on toes. I mean, right? That's reasonable, isn't it?


I doubt it, the idea that Russian soldiers are using Maps to navigate in Ukraine is a PR disaster waiting to happen.


Right up there with invasion.


I recall one study where the researchers (with approval) made google maps suggest a route which looped back on itself... the idea was to test if people would blindly follow google maps or if they would try to reason for themselves using GM as one source of info.

turns out many people just blindly followed.

So closing/blacklisting accounts might not be the best solution, you could just make all the route instructions take them back to Russia.


Definitely remove this information that may be used by civilians to leave hot zones prior to attack. I cannot believe this level of lack of insight from a group of people who call themselves engineers.


I remember reports on the first night of the invasion of a traffic jam from Crimea towards Ukraine. It was 2-3am local time. Makes me wonder how many Russian troops sneaked in personal devices.


Why is this immediately attributed to Russian troops as markers? Couldn't it also be Ukrainian movements using this for their organization? 'Farms' being code for supply houses?


If that were the case they should still be removed from Google Maps since the locations are correlated with later airstrikes. From the linked Buzzfeed article:

>> “The tags in Google Maps were created on Feb 28th, and people noticed that the tags match the places the missile strikes today,”


How the fuck is google still serving Russians?


This is an un-authenticated method of communication. It might be hard to stop people from using this, but it seems easy to overwhelm them with misinformation.

Start placing 10, or a hundred times as many of these signs around non-important objects. Drown the signal in noise.

Some consideration is needed for how to keep these symbols believable, without accidentally marking certain people for being bombed. Still, I think if you have marked 60% of roofs in a town with these signs, then some-one will realize something is wrong.


To clarify, are you suggesting these are unusual because "farms" are being marked in urban areas? What is the possibility these are simply addresses of farming-related businesses (e.g. farm equipment suppliers)?

(comment cannot be removed, only edited)


Amazing, OP asks for help removing this information from the internet and you replicate it here for safekeeping.


Please remove this post


also google probably should delete all new entries from Ukraine or review them manually. if deleting all of them is difficult for users maybe maybe op want to create falses? idk


Google should remove such maps retrspectively.


looks like free OSINT for UA. could also be used for trolling (set markers on russian forces) if true


Probably not.


Strap in boys, gonna be an interesting century.




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