Google Suspends Map Maker Following Hacks

There were some spam attacks and obscene edits that forced Google to shutdown its map maker for the time being.

Google has now suspended its crowd-sourced map editing tool called the Map Maker offline. This tool was used by a lot of people and they were able to add details to the map. Those countries that don’t have detailed maps used this tool.

So if you were living somewhere and you checked the map to see where you were living and found out that your area wasn’t given the detail it required, then you were able to use this tool to add the details. Details included roads and parks.

This helped out a lot because now Google Map was used even in the remotest of areas because the people had access to Google Maps and they were able to visit places using these maps. In the recent months the Map Maker has been used to upload inappropriate content to the Google Maps.

A recent prank played by the internet trolls saw the Android mascot urinating on the Apple logo. Another internet troll added a business called Edwards Snow Den and he located it right in the White House by exploiting several loopholes.

He was able to change a business listing’s address after its creation. Google even recently announced that they are working to improve their spam detection system for the Map Maker. But we can all see that all of this is not enough.

Now we will see Google shutting down the Map Maker service which starts from 12th May. So now if you try to make an edit on Google Maps using the Map Maker tool, you will get a pop up which will tell you that the tool has been stopped by Google.

The Product Manager for Map Maker, Pavithra Kanakarajan, confirmed the news in a blog post on Google’s Product Forums by saying that this is directly related to the increased number of attacks to spam Google Maps over the past months. She said that the incident with the Apple logo was unfortunate and it was particularly troubling for them.