Trump Tower briefly renamed 'Dump Tower' on Google Maps by prankster

US President-elect Donald Trump's midtown Manhattan residence, Trump Tower, was briefly renamed on Google Maps over the weekend by a prankster. The 58-story tower on Fifth Avenue was named Dump Tower by a cyber vandal on Saturday (26 November). Users could view the pin for "Dump Tower" if they zoomed in on the building at just the right angle on the mapping service.

Twitter users also noticed that the tower was also named in Russian as well from another angle, which could be a dig at Trump's alleged ties to Russia.

Washington accused Moscow in October of orchestrating a series of breaches targeting the Democratic National Committee and other US political organisations in an attempt to meddle in the presidential election. Clinton's campaign also claimed that Russia was responsible for the hack into campaign chair John Podesta's personal account and steady trickle of damaging emails by WikiLeaks, arguing that President Vladimir Putin was attempting to tip the election in Trump's favor.

Social media users reportedly started to tweet about the mysterious edits on Saturday afternoon. A few hours later, some users noticed that a second location - the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Columbus Circle - has also been renamed to "Dump, PIX11 reported.

Trump has yet to comment on the changes.

A Google spokeswoman apologized for the erroneous edits and said the company had changed the names back to the originals. However, she did not specify any details about the cause of the changes and how they were made.

"Some inappropriate names were surfacing in Google Maps that should not be, and we apologize for any offense this may have caused," the spokeswoman told the Huffington Post. "Our teams immediately took action and have fixed the issue."

According to a Google Maps FAQ, users can made changes to Google Maps data via Google Map Maler. However, any changes made need to be reviewed and approved before they are implemented.

Since Trump's historic surprise win over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on 8 November, the New York high-rise has been used as his transition headquarters. It has also continued to draw protesters, supporters and tourists and has recently gotten added security and a no-fly zone put in place by the Federal Aviation Administration in the area.

This isn't the first time pranksters have made mischievous edits to locations on Google Maps.

In May 2015, searching for "nigga house" in Google Maps would lead you straight to the White House. In March last year, the names of various towns and cities in Spain were changed by virtual vandals to their former names as Islamic kingdoms nearly a thousand years ago.

The same year, Google announced that it would no longer allow public edits to its maps after a series of fake edit "incidents."