Government Anti-Terrorism Link Leads To…Porn

An external link on a UK government site sends a reader to Japanese porn.

It’s a bit like a bad joke. When a man was surfing the site of the British Home Office looking for information about anti-terrorism powers on the site of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, he clicked on a link for the external site of the Technical Advisory Board.

However, the link didn’t provide quite the information he expected, as he was directed to a Japanese porn site.

He told the BBC, which informed the Home Office, who removed the link. At first the HO believed it has been hacked, but it was nothing so exciting. Instead, the porn company had simply bought the domain after it expired.

A Home Office spokesman took great pains to explain that the site wasn’t government-hosted, but external:

"There was a link on the page that said Technical Advisory Board website. But when you clicked on the link it took you to the porn."

"We were notified this morning and removed the link immediately."