Home Office red-faced on porn link

The Home Office is facing its second porn-related incident in a matter of days.

This time, however, the embarrassment has been caused by a link on the Home Office website, which redirected surfers to a Japanese porn site.

The link was found by a member of the public who was looking for more information about new laws concerning data retention introduced in the UK this week.

It should have led to the website of the Technical Advisory Board (TAB).

However, the original domain name was allowed to lapse and was obviously bought up by the Japanese company for its own purposes.

"More care needs to be taken about ensuring website URLs do not fall into the wrong hands, even if it has been decided to mothball an old website," said Graham Cluley of security firm Sophos.

"Can we expect the Home Office to keep better tabs on these things in future?" asked Cluley.

The offending link has now been removed.

Earlier this week, Labour MP Paul Clark had his website hacked and defaced.