March 9 (UPI) — Officials in a Florida city confirmed residents trying to visit the government’s old website are now being shown a porn site.
The City of Springfield said residents began to complain last week that they were seeing pornographic content when they tried to visit the city’s old website, which was abandoned in favor of springfield.fl.gov about three years ago.
The old site was apparently purchased by a provider of Japanese pornography after the city allowed its ownership to expire.
“Our main website is springfield.fl.gov, and if the citizens go to [the old website], it now goes to a porno site,” Mayor Ralph Hammond told the Panama City News Herald.
“We have no control over that,” Hammond said. “We’re getting accused of placing that site out there, but the city of Springfield has nothing to do with it.”
He said the city’s IT department is working on buying back the old address, as well as variations of the current address to make sure similar problems don’t occur in the future.
“It’s quite embarrassing,” Hammond said. “I had one gentleman call and say, ‘I’m not voting for you anymore because you got porn on the city website.'”
