Creepy stalking or error: Where does Google Maps think you are?

This week Google came under fire for a rather scary new feature discovered by Guardian Journalist Alex Hern. He searched his name on Google Maps and found a location where he regularly goes to play card games.

Others soon jumped on the bandwagon and quickly, concerns such as invasion of privacy, surfaced. Some search results showed where users had been, while others were blatantly wrong, and racist.

A Google spokesperson told Yahoo Singapore, "Some inappropriate results are surfacing in Google Maps that should not be, and we apologise for any offense this may have caused. Our teams are working to fix this issue quickly."

Looking for answers, writer Henk van Ess explained how the search seems to work:

Type in a name of a living person and Google Maps will try to match your name to a database based on data of a local Chambers of Commerce or a similar source. This handy feature only works if the person is registered as part of a company, organisation, university or foundation.

Some very unusual results turned up when people used Twitter handles to search:

Stll, some social media users managed to have some fun with it: