Google has acknowledged a problem with its Talk service that misrouted messages from users to unintended recipients. At 10:30am EDT today, Google reported on its Apps Dashboard that it had "identified an issue with Google Talk messages sent between 22:00 PST and 01:30 PST. Any messages sent after 01:30 PST are unaffected."

That "issue" resulted in messages typed into a Google Talk or Hangouts chat with one user to be sent to another random person on the sender's Talk contact list. A number of users reported the problem on the Google Chat product forum, and Ars has gotten confirmation of the problem from other Talk users.

In one incident, a Google Talk user told Ars, an explicit message intended for her boyfriend was delivered instead "to someone I haven't talked to in months—with a religious username."

Google changed the architecture of Google Talk earlier this year with the rollout of the Hangouts chat application, shifting away from support of XMPP. But the problem affected users of Talk across all of its interfaces, including Gmail, the Hangouts app, and XMPP-based clients.

Update: In response to Ars inquiries on the issue, Google has issued the following statement: