People forged judges’ signatures to trick Google into changing results

Enlarge / Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

It's not easy to convince Google to remove unflattering information about you from its search results. One of the few reasons Google will remove search listings if it gets a court order to do so. But getting a court order isn't easy, either. Courts have held that the First Amendment gives publications broad discretion to decide what kind of information to publish-especially if it's accurate.

As a result, some unscrupulous parties have taken an unethical-and likely criminal-shortcut: they sent Google fake court orders, complete with forged signatures from a judge. An investigation by CBS News uncovered more than 60 cases where someone used this tactic.

"CBS News sorted through thousands of these court orders and spotted small businesses from all across America trying to clean up their reputations," two CBS reporters write. "But we also spotted a problem: Dozens of the court documents were fakes."

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