Hundreds of thousands of spam listings on Google "My Maps"
google spam · 1 comment · 250 words · read ~837 times.
Blogging - because Google don't offer a bug bounty for spam reports...
Back in 2007, Google introduced "My Maps":
Easily create custom maps with the places that matter to you. Allow friends to see and edit your maps, or publish them to the whole world.
Like most Google products, it was effectively abandoned after launch - receiving a superficial update in 2014. Now it is a haven for spammers and fraudsters.
Even Google's mighty AI is unable to detect this complex spam...
How big a problem is this? Pretty big.
Each of those "My Maps" contains a link to a dodgy site delivering dubious downloads. There is, of course, no "report spam" button on these maps. Even if there were, I'm not sure I could be bothered to do Google's job for them.
Naturally, people have reported this spam to Google many times before, but Google show no signs of removing it.
Don't worry, it gets worse! If someone shares a spam map with you - there's no way to remove it from your account!
I've no way to report this to Google, so if you do - please let them know.
Porn Spam on Google Maps
Eric Andersen says:
I used My Maps in 2013 (and it remained unused and perhaps unvisited until just now). I did not find SPAM n any of MyMaps. Perhaps the source is something other than MyMaps. I was presented with survey that gave me the opinion that perhaps MyMaps was not here for longer...