weasels ripped my photostream

I've been uploading photos to panoramio and then to google earth for a few months, and gotten a couple useful comments, as well as pointing out mis-labeled locations. Yesterday I got what I would consider a comment worth reporting to the authorities, and since then I've gotten a half dozen. If I have so many in a short time, I wouldn't be surprised if this useful service is being ripped to shreds by malevolent ghost users.

Here's the message body:

"Thanks for publishing this great photo you qualified for a SPECIAL gift. CLICK HERE to claim your gift."

Of course, the tip-off was they selected mundane photos I've uploaded for geo-tracking purposes, none of the more photogenic subjects, not to mention "SPECIAL gift" just has to be a trap. I wasted no time in reporting this abuse to the admins, but it's Memorial Day weekend in the U.S. and possibly response time will be above average.

The first trash arrived at 4:34 PM local time, and the latest within the hour.

Using the Lynx text browser on NetBSD, I gingerly looked beneath the scab in this comment. Panoramio lets one embed links in comments, so this is ripe for people who should be beaten with sticks. The links all go through the exact same "snipurl" and expand to these domains:

clickbooth dot com
monetizeit dot net
and end up at:
bahamiancruises dot net

Wow, what a prize, junk mail telling me I've won a cruise; just send money for the postage to deliver the tickets, or a time share, or whatever.

The user ids so far are:

1786106
1791939
1793020
1793996
1797718
1797788

As Bugs would say, what kind of maroons are they, anyway?

I've gone ahead and deleted these from my streams, and will be on the look out for more over the next few days.