Over the weekend, there were four reports of Google Maps users complaining that they received spam emails, containing pornography, from Google. The complaints come via a Google Maps Help thread and to be honest, it is not clear what exactly is happening. I know that Google is not sending out pornographic emails, but is someone targeting Google Maps local listings with spam? Why are these users complaining?
The first complaint came in on Saturday and read:
I just got a porn spam email sent via Google Maps. How did that happen? How did they find me? I DO NOT want to be on Google maps and I certainly DON'T need spammers emailing me from there. How do I stop this?
Maybe a spammer is using the email link feature, and somehow using a Google Maps URL to redirect unsuspecting users to pornographic sites? This happens often with Google Sites URLs.
There are more details, with email headers - which shows me the emails don't appear to be coming from a Google server - in the threads.
Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.
