The other day, a customer texted me a picture of an e-mail, and it showed a request to take over his Google Business Profile. My initial reaction was to ignore it. His business listing was claimed and properly verified, so how could anyone steal it? Only when I looked at the original e-mail from Google did I see that he does need to respond.
After doing some research, I realized that it is a common scam to steal Google Business Profiles. Either from competitors or to extort money to gain back access to the profile. In the above example, you can even see the Shutterstock Watermark on the profile picture! After verifying that the notice really came from Google, I clicked on the “respond” button and denied the transfer.
