Google is fighting back against fraud with an advanced verification process for plumbers and locksmiths.

An email sent out to Google’s top contributors states the company’s plan for an advanced verification process is being beta tested in San Diego. All locksmiths and plumbers currently verified will have to go through the new verification process. Failure to do so before November 1 will result in the loss of verification and the removal from Google Maps.

Of course, any new applications will have to go through the new process as well, which said to be simple. It includes a combination of questions from Google and completing an application with a third party verification company. The new application process is said to take about two weeks to complete.

The entire advanced verification process for plumbers and locksmiths in the San Diego area is explained in this Google My Business help article. The process will also be used for plumbers and locksmiths using AdWords.

Why Locksmiths? Here’s Why.

Did you know that one of the biggest online scams is perpetrated by so-called locksmiths? Google knows, and the issues are finally being taken seriously.

It only takes a few bad actors to ruin it for the rest. In this case, the bad actors are individuals or companies claiming to be locksmiths to make some quick cash. Here’s how the scam works.

Locksmith Scam:

• After being locked out of one’s home and not knowing what to do, a quick Google search brings up a list of local locksmiths.
• Google returns AdWords ads and Google My Business listings for locksmiths promising cheap or inexpensive service rates.
• Calling one of these bargain locksmiths actually routes you to an offshore call center, where they dispatch someone local to come to your door.
• The locksmith shows up and, before trying any other options, immediately drills the lock open and slaps you with a large bill for the service.
• The cheap service you thought you were getting then turns into a large expense.
• Congratulations, you can now get back into your home but you’ve become a victim of locksmith fraud.

This locksmith scam has been well documented over the past few years and even written about in the New York Times. To get an idea of how rampant it is becoming, search for “locksmith scam” in Google.

Google’s advanced verification should cut down on the amount of fraudulent locksmiths found in ads and search results. As for why plumbers have to go through an advanced verification, I’m not quite sure. I tried to research online plumbing scams but was unable to find anything.

Google is notoriously secretive about why it makes the decisions it does. Regardless, I have reached out for comment in an attempt to gain further information.

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During the annual Pride festival in San Francisco, Fernando Velez, a 34-year-old from Puerto Rico, presented his vibrant comic book collection featuring LGBTQ superheroes inspired by real people in San Francisco.

Velez said he was 25 when he created and wrote the first book in the Kraven Comics Universe, aiming to represent LGBTQ people with his creative vision.

“I feel like growing up I didn’t have any representation or identify with any character,” he told SFGATE during the festival. “When I look at my community, I think there are so many heroes that need to be celebrated.”

Velez said his first powerful, flamboyant superhero character was inspired by Sister Roma, one of San Francisco’s most notable drag queens.

Before moving to Los Angeles, Velez said he was influenced by the culture and community of the city of San Francisco, where he lived for 14 years.

“I always call it my playground, my muse, my inspiration,” he said. “That’s why the heroes’ base is actually in San Francisco.”

Velez said he got his first book out with the help of community fundraisers early in the coronavirus pandemic. Nine years later he has written about 13 different comics, each about LGBTQ heroes trying to protect humanity.

“All the classics [series] is about the six LGBTQ heroes who largely forgive humanity for how we have been treated for so many generations because, ironically, humanity’s survival rests in the hands of these gay heroes,” he said.

The comics creator said he’s had multiple reactions to his comics amid the controversy surrounding LGBTQ children’s books.

“I see a lot of transgender people cry when they see themselves portrayed in comics because as adults we all want to feel important, to belong, and it’s so important to be able to give that portrayal,” he said he.

Velez added that he loves to see straight parents show their kids the comics and say, “See if anyone tells you about this [LGBTQ] People are bad, they are told they are superheroes.”

In recent years, LGBTQ “book bans” have drawn national attention and caused an uproar as some seek to push for censorship of LGBTQ-themed books. Most recently, San Ramon Unified School District board members debated the district libraries’ book policies as some parents called for LGBTQ-themed books to be removed, SFGATE previously reported.

Velez’s comics are not immune to controversy either, some say they shouldn’t be viewed by children.

“But no, we gave free books to all drag queen study classes across the country,” Velez responded to the negative reactions.

Despite the controversy, Velez believes it’s important to keep pushing his creative work and aiming for a film adaptation of his comics.

“We can’t just sit back and let them win,” Velez said. “We need to get our content and our books out there.”

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San Francisco AND Chesa Boudin

By Elina Lingappa

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Rory Fleming published an article in The Filter Magazine entitled “Scapegoating of Chesa Boudin Reflects Ugly Attitudes to Unhoused People,” an article that unpacked the dialogue that made up much of the tough-on-crime -Rhetoric powers San Francisco by storm.

“Perhaps nothing triggers some San Francisco residents more than District Attorney Chesa Boudin,” wrote Fleming, “[e]elected on a platform to criminalize poverty and homelessness. “

District Attorney Boudin is in the midst of enormous public scrutiny that many are misdirected, supporters claim.

Last but not least, that effort includes a recall led by Richie Greenberg, a political commentator who has sparked questionable rhetoric about crime rates in San Francisco for the past two years.

More recently, Washington Post reporter Dion Lim falsely accused Boudin of dropping the car theft charges and published a viral article spreading the misinformation.

Amid complaints from public figures like Lim and Greenberg, many San Franciscans have added the city’s large, uninhabited population to their list of complaints about Boudins Office.

Indeed, Boudin has been vocal in favor of decriminalizing the uninhabited since his first campaign for the district attorney.

However, as Fleming reveals in his article, the public rhetoric against Boudin’s policies not only contradicts the progressive image of San Francisco, but also speaks for a long-standing trend in the city’s history.

The housing crisis as it exists now began in the 1980s, according to NPR reporter and Freakonomics producer Greg Rosalsky, who recently wrote an article about this history of California politics affecting the unhodged.

During this time, the federal government cut much of the housing assistance budget as the state of California cut funding for social services and mental health care at the same time. For example, residents who were already in distress found themselves with little to no safety net, and many were left without accommodation, argues Rosalsky.

The problem only worsened in the years to come.

San Francisco passed a rental control bill in 1994, but landlords and homeowners soon found loopholes in the law. The evictions continued and numerous units were withdrawn from the market, further reducing the rental offer.

The infamous cost of living in San Francisco was the nail on the coffin when big tech took off lately.

The city reflected on a 2018 study by Zillow economists that found that the number of uninhabited people is increasing as residents spend more than a third of their income on housing.

In 2018, the Department of Housing and Urban Development found that a family making $ 117,400 in the San Francisco area has “low income” given the average one-bedroom rental in the city is $ 3,700 per month according to Fleming.

Unsurprisingly, as the cost of living has risen, so has the number of displaced and unhodged residents.

The current uninhabited population is now over 8,000 in San Francisco and a staggering 151,000 in the state of California in 2020.

The problem has reached unprecedented proportions.

Sometime in 2018, a UN official, Leilani Farha, even commented on the state of the Bay Area in a report titled “On decent housing as part of the right to a decent standard of” Life.”

“[The situation] represents cruel and inhumane treatment and is a violation of many human rights, including the right to life, housing, health and water hygiene … The right to a safe home is a universal right under international human rights law. A lack of legal certainty can never justify evictions of residents of informal settlements, ”she wrote in her criticism of the Bay Area policy.

“Most of the people on the street live with structural trauma,” she continued, which means that they have lost their jobs, cannot afford an apartment, have been evicted by a landlord. The structural trauma causes deeply personal effects that can lead to a life on the street that triggers drug use.

Despite this story and context, much of the hardship is faced with misunderstanding by many Bay Area residents.

“Unfortunately, apart from its liberal reputation, San Francisco has a strong conservative streak directed against the working class, our uninhabited neighbors and reform of our criminal justice system,” local defense attorney John Hamasaki told Fleming.

In this way, many San Franciscans have taken to blaming the uninhabited populations themselves and calling for more robust policies to combat crime.

When prosecutor Chesa Boudin began speaking publicly about decriminalization, he faced significant setbacks.

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, those previously incarcerated are ten times more likely than the general public to be out of housing, and this demographic is disproportionately made up of women, people of color, and those over 45 years of age.

These trends are not surprising given that a criminal record has a massive impact on both employment and housing options for previously incarcerated people, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

To complete the cycle, uninhabited residents are much more likely to come into contact with law enforcement, even with acts as minor as sleeping on the street. This leaves us with what the Prison Policy Initiative calls the “revolving door” of imprisonment, Allianz said.

Most people affected by homelessness have either been displaced, lost their jobs, or are fleeing from an abusive partner, according to studies that found drug abuse and criminal acts out of desperation only occur after most people are trapped in the revolving door – despite much of the right rhetoric about uninhabited people.

While the claim has become popular that people without shelter resist change and help, help is far more inaccessible than is often assumed.

For example, according to The Conversation Magazine, many shelters exclude certain populations, most commonly families, LGBTQ youth, and unhodged people with pets.

The magazine adds: “Laws against tramps are counterproductive because they make it difficult to escape homelessness.” In addition to those directly affected by homelessness, taxpayers also suffer from the consequences.

In 2015 alone, the city of San Francisco paid $ 20.6 million for arrests on quality of life charges, a total of 125 arrests.

Chesa Boudin is not alone; Politicians and prosecutors across the country have recognized the negative effects of tough anti-crime laws.

No one has exemplified this more than Boston District Attorney Rachel Rollins.

According to their campaign website, Rollins has promised to stop prosecuting 15 low-level crimes, including drug possession. Each of these low-level crimes has a disproportionate impact on the non-accommodated population.

Several academic sources have found Rollins’ policies useful, including Anna Harvey of New York University.

Harvey’s research found that defendants who were not charged with lower-level nonviolent offenses faced 65 percent fewer misdemeanor arrests and 75 percent fewer crime arrests than those originally prosecuted in the following years.

Therefore, the rhetoric that Boudin is causing the city to get into turmoil is falling short according to these statistics.

Research has not only shown that alternatives to law enforcement are more beneficial to public safety, but Boudin’s policies are nowhere near as radical as Rollins’.

In fact, according to Fleming, Boudin only pledged to halt drug possession prosecutions in the event of a purported hitchhike, a far cry from the 15 crimes Rollins no longer pursues.

Elina Lingappa is a sophomore at the University of San Francisco with a dual focus on sociology and politics. Originally from Seattle, Washington, she is deeply passionate about criminal justice and educational justice.

The post Chesa Boudin Criticized, however Nonetheless Says He Fights for San Francisco’s Unhoused Residents appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

A 76-year-old Chinese woman who stood up against a man who beat her on a street corner in downtown San Francisco said the unprovoked attack scared and traumatized her. Her alleged attacker was arrested on Thursday.

Xiao Zhen Zie told KPIX-TV in a tearful interview that she was waiting to cross a downtown street on Wednesday when a 39-year-old man hit her without warning and for no reason, one of several recent attacks on elderly Asian Americans in the bay area.

Speaking in her native Taishan dialect, translated by her daughter, Zie said she responded instinctively by repeatedly hitting the man with a wooden stick.

A KPIX-TV employee videotaped the aftermath of the attack after stumbling across the scene during his morning run. On the video, Zie howls as she puts an ice pack on her injured eye. The video shows the attacker on a stretcher, blood dripping from his mouth.

“Very traumatized, very scared, and that eye is still bleeding,” the woman’s daughter, Dong-Mei Li, told the ward when describing her mother’s injuries. “The right eye still can’t see anything.”

Zei’s grandson, John Chen, said the attack frightened his grandmother to leave her home.

Police said suspect Steven Jenkins attacked an 83-year-old Vietnamese man in the same area just before attacking Zie. A security guard was chasing Jenkins after attacking the man and when he escaped he hit Zie, Officer Adam Lobsinger said in a statement.

The guard held Jenkins until officers arrived.

The elderly man, Ngoc Pham, fell and suffered cuts and bruises on his head, and fractures to his nose and possibly his neck, said Ben Mok, manager of the San Francisco Community Youth Center, which set up an online fundraiser to help Pham’s recovery. Mok said doctors rated the severity of Pham’s neck injury.

After Jenkins was hospitalized for an unrelated illness, he was taken to jail and booked on an investigation into assault and mistreatment of the elderly, Lobsinger said.

Investigators are trying to determine whether racial prejudice was a factor in the attacks. It wasn’t immediately clear whether Jenkins had a lawyer to speak on his behalf.

Police stepped up patrols in Asian neighborhoods after six Asian women and two other people were killed in the recent wave of violence in the San Francisco Bay Area in Georgia.

The attacks have sparked new fears among members of the Asian-American community, who have become increasingly victims of harassment and violence since the coronavirus spread to the United States last year.

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