StreetEasy was among the websites and apps struck by an anti-Semitic hack on Thursday that for a brief time labeled maps of New York City as “Jewtropolis.”
The attack also affected Snapchat, Citi Bike and the New York Times — all of which use maps from the third-party company Mapbox. Reports surfaced this morning on Twitter that the maps had been re-named, prompting Mapbox to issue a statement confirming that its New York City map was “vandalized.”
The hack impacted StreetEasy’s building pages, which consolidates information about properties.
In a statement, a StreetEasy spokesperson said the company was “deeply sorry” for the incident.
“An issue with one of our third-party map vendors resulted in an offensive term appearing on some StreetEasy maps this morning,” the spokesperson said. “We are deeply sorry and addressed it as soon as we knew.”
Within hours, StreetEasy and Mapbox — as well as other impacted sites — replaced the maps appearing on the listing portal.
Mapbox provides a base layer of maps to companies, which then add on their own data. Clients include Foursquare, Lonely Planet, Evernote and the Weather Channel.
In a statement, Mapbox stressed that it has a “zero-tolerance” policy against hate speech.
“The malicious edit was made by a source that attempted several other hateful edits,” the statement said. “Our security team has confirmed no additional attempts were successful.”
Powered by WPeMatico