The UK phone number plan allocates the prefix 09… (or +44 9…) to premium rate numbers[1]. A change to an 09 number should be a red flag for the edit — I'd expect very, very few businesses to use a premium rate number as their main contact number. In fact, it seems many categories of business are banned from using them [2].

Some other European countries have similar prefix-based number allocation systems.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_the_Unite...

[2] http://www.fairtelecoms.org.uk/service-numbers-084-087-09-an...

I've tried to report this map spam before - details at https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2018/04/hundreds-of-thousands-of-sp...

Happy to be contacted if you'd like more information.

Your blog post appears to be conflating Google Maps with MyMaps. MyMaps lets people create & publish their own maps with random POIs: for example, here's a map of nice wineries around Melbourne.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mtgpe7JU9OtHUUdvG_A6Uq0eTp...

However, these do not show up in the "main" Google Maps, and adding spam to them isn't any more effective than adding spam to a random website.

Disclaimer: I used to work at Google Maps.

I mean, the url for these spam entries starts "Google.com/maps" so I think it is pretty reasonable to call this Google Maps spam.

I don't remember how I found those specific ones, but using Google Maps for Android finds some pretty similar entries. Perhaps you could pass that on to your old team?

Sure, send me a mail and I'll do my best.