Man Fools Google Maps By Creating Virtual Traffic Jam On Empty Street

In your day-to-day commute from home to office and vice versa, you must be facing traffic especially in big cities like Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi, and others. In a YouTube video post, an artist from Berlin has demonstrated how he tricked Google Maps and turned an empty street to a red congested street on Google Maps.

This trick was not performed by using any software infiltration or by any other hacking methods. He created the jam by just dragging a handcart on-road filled with 99 smartphones.

Google Maps which is a default navigation app on Android smartphones. The app depends on the data collected from the users it detects the GPS of all the other smartphones and with that collective the data it gives the output.

Google generates a live traffic map based on location and data collected by individual users. The crowd-sourced data reflects traffic jam and the open roads or fast-moving traffic shows green indication and slow-moving traffic shows red. In his experiment, Weckert was successful in marking an empty street as red on Google Maps which means that anyone can trick Google Maps.

Meanwhile, it can be reversible switching off all the smartphone in a crowded street will turn the red sign on Google Map to green which is again a complete bluff to the navigation app.

"99 smartphones are transported in a handcart to generate virtual traffic jam in Google Maps. Through this activity, it is possible to turn a green street red which has an impact in the physical world by navigating cars on another route!" reads Simon Weckert Twitter.