Rediff.com« Back to articlePrint this article

Bahrain: Indian embassy's former portal now a porn site

June 25, 2010 16:04 IST

A web portal which once belonged to the Indian embassy in Bahrain has now turned into a porn site.

The teen porn website, located at www.indianembassy-bah.com, was used by the Indian embassy before they moved to www.indianembassybahrain.com last year.

"The embassy should not have let the name go and should have secured it, even if they had to change the administrator," said an official of Batelco, the local telecom service provider.

The official told the Gulf Daily News that Batelco was powerless to help, since it was only responsible for registering domain names ending in .bh.

A spokesperson of the Indian embassy said they simply stopped using the old website after changing to a new administrator. Officials were shocked to discover that the old address was now being used to peddle porn.

"We stopped using this address in July last year after we were not satisfied with the service we were provided by the administrators. After that we changed to the new address, www.indianembassybahrain.com," the spokesperson said.

"But since then, we have had scores of calls from people complaining about the old address being used for pornography," he said.

He said the embassy had tried contacting the operators behind the teen porn site, but had received no response. Since it is an unregistered free domain, it is unclear who owns it.

"Under the circumstances, there is nothing we can do, but we keep telling people about the new address," he said.

The official from Batelco also advised institutions to register their internet domain names to protect their rights and privacy, as well as to prevent misuse.

For the moment though, anyone searching Google for 'Indian embassy Bahrain' will find the teen porn website listed first, above the official Indian embassy site.

© Copyright 2024 PTI. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of PTI content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent.