Snapchat users on Thursday morning shared screenshots of New York City's name being changed to 'Jewtropolis' in the maps. The changes to the name of the city were made in a mapping software used by Snapchat, called Mapbox. Snapchat called it an act of "vandalism" and said it worked with its partner Mapbox to "get this fixed immediately". Apps like Jump Bikes, StreetEasy, CitiBike, Weather Channel and the real estate website Zillow were also similarly affected. A number of Snapchat users shared screenshots of it on social media tagging the companies and reporting the hack.  In a statement, Snapchat said defacement was "deeply offensive".

It later came to notice that apps like Foursquare, Lonely Planet, and Evernote which were affected all used Mapbox, a San Francisco-based start-up that customises online maps for websites and applications. Maps made by this company are used by more than 420 million people around the world. However, Mapbox was not directly hacked, they crowdsource mapping data from OpenStreetMap that describes itself as 'a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world'. Air Canada's App Gets Hacked, Passport Details of Over 20K Passengers Potentially Compromised

MapBox calls OpenStreetMap the 'Wikipedia of maps'. The company's website reads: 'It's a project founded on the belief that when data is open, everyone can work together to build a map. Anyone can quickly add roads and buildings to keep up with a changing road.'

New York City was renamed as 'Jewtropolis' earlier this month too, however, it is not sure if it is the same hacker.  It had also changed street names to 'Donald Trump Avenue', 'Zionist Cannibal Drive', 'Pedophile Bridge', 'Adolf Hitler Boulevard', and 'S**tload Circuit'.

As social media users questioned the hacked, Mapbox released a statement, saying that its team "deleted and removed" the term within an hour. They added saying, "Mapbox has a zero-tolerance policy against hate speech and any malicious edits to our map. The malicious edit was made by a source that attempted several other hateful edits. Our security team has confirmed no additional attempts were successful."

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 31, 2018 09:40 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).