Recently I noticed one spam activity in a huge number. One user is adding too many POIs as “Parking lot” on the map. His/her activity has lots of mistakes and it seems the user is doing this to earn points only.
Some of the mistakes:
The user is adding POIs without any proper name and only with a generic name “Parking lot” in English or “جای پارک” in Persian. We all know adding POIs without a proper name is against the rules.
The user adds parking wherever he/she sees some cars beside each other even two! So, many POIs he/she added aren’t real parking lots, and on the other hand, many of them are private parking only.
Many of the POIs he is adding for real parking, are duplicate ones indeed! He/she doesn’t pay attention to the existence of the real parking on the map and even in several cases added several POIs for only one parking! For example one point in the southern part of the parking and one point in the northern part with only for example with 30 meters away.
I appreciate it if you could help check this issue and prevent more wrong additions.
To find the user who is adding these POIs I bring some examples:
Fake ones he/she added those aren’t real parking lots:
This user added many such POIs in different cities and it seems is extending to even more! So, I appreciate your help in keeping the map safe from such an activity.
It seems the user is adding many other categories, too. He/she adds many playgrounds and sport fields in the same way. Without a proper name and duplicates in some cases.
It is not an AI-generated activity based on satellite imagery because it even added POIs in Persian and also with a clear human thinking pattern (and mistakes) as I saw in some cases. Even the user added POIs with wrong names and wrong categories.
Here are some examples of the newly added points for Playgrounds with generic names:
I’m happy to share that the incorrect playgrounds and sports fields have been removed from Maps! Once again, the team will look into the account of the user who had created them.
Thank you once again for reporting these violations.
Just to mention the links I prepared above about parking lots, sports fields, and playground categories are just a few examples of hundreds of such additions in many cities. Also, I’m not still aware of any other categories the user added. Anyway checking its profile by the team is helpful to revert such activities in any other categories, too.
I hope the team will stop and prevent this wrong activity from the root.
You’re right. The team is always looking into the root cause of the issues we escalate and assessing ways to improve existing processes. It may take time to see results on the map, but a lot of things happen in the background.
May you please help to stop this spam activity? It is now extended to many other parts and many wrong and unnecessary POIs without a proper name added to the map
May you inform me about the result of the investigation? I see thousands of such POIs. Someone clearly wants to increase his/her points by adding these wrong points.
We can’t provide information about the investigation of other users’ accounts.
However, if you could share more examples of incorrectly added places, I can ask the team to check if it’s one and the same user doing those edits. Will you be able to?
Sure, I don’t ask about the details of the investigation of other users’ accounts! I just asked about the case in general. I mean does the investigation get to the final result to stop this spam or not?
Oh, I misunderstood the question @Amiran . I can’t say that there is a definitive result where all spam is removed or prevented from happening again. There is always spam somewhere on the map created by bad actors or simply by people who don’t understand the rules. Even in this current thread, you’ve reported incorrectly added parking lots, playgrounds, sports fields, and soccer fields - four different types of categories, which cover a huge amount of data/places.
Sometimes, it’s vigilant Local Guides like you who report spam, and the team investigates the cause and the users involved. Sometimes, it’s automatic filters that block spam and fraudulent activities. In any case, every report helps us to improve the systems and procedures.
I will share the new batch with the team to look into and take the necessary actions. If reporting on Connect is troublesome, you can always flag the places directly in Maps; every report counts. Whichever option you prefer, thank you!
I also flag many of such wrong points these days. I reported on Connect because as you also mentioned, this is a huge amount of data and it is impossible to flag all one by one.
Anyway based on your advice, I’ll continue doing so whenever I see such wrong POIs in related to this spam activity.
